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Reminiscences of 
Early Chicago 



artie iLatesiDe Classics 

Reminiscences 0/^ 
Early Chicago 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

BY 

MABEL McILVAINE 




<$fce Hake? ibe p>re#5, Chicago 

R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY 

CHRISTMAS, MCMXII 



M /S 









jdubltityeitf deface 



THE great interest aroused a year ago by 
the publication of the Autobiography 
of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard in the 
annual volume of The Lakeside Classics has 
influenced the publishers to seek more mate- 
rial pertaining to the pioneer days of Chicago 
as the subject for this year's volume. Unfortu- 
nately no one work of appropriate size and sus- 
tained interest has been found available ; but 
in the selections from the writings of Charles 
Fenno Hoffman and Harriet Martineau, two 
talented travelers who visited Chicago when it 
was a village, in an historical address by John 
Wentworth, and in the reminiscences of Mr. 
Wentworth, Mr. J. Y. Scammon, and Judge 
John Caton at the Old Settlers' Reunion of the 
Calumet Club in 1879 tne publishers believe 
they have found material that teems with the 
spirit of the days of early Chicago, and gives 
an intimate picture of what Chicago really 
was in the thirties. 

To Miss Mabel Mcllvaine is due great credit 
for her untiring efforts in searching out these 
selections from the great mass of material in 
the library of the Chicago Historical Society, 
and for her Introduction. Acknowledgment 
is also due the officers of the Calumet Club 



$uhli$$tt& preface 



for permission to print the three selections from 
the report of the Old Settlers' Reunion, and to 
Mr. Moses J. Wentworth for the copy from 
which the portrait of his uncle is reproduced 
as a frontispiece. 

The subject-matter of these little volumes 
and the fact that they began their annual 
appearance ten years ago is liable to obscure 
the purpose of their production, — to furnish 
a concrete example of how useful and good 
a book can be made at small expense. The 
fact that they are the work of the indentured 
apprentices of The Lakeside Press gives them 
additional interest in these days of agitation 
for vocational education. The book is not for 
sale, but at this kindly season is sent to the 
friends and patrons of The Press with the 
good wishes of 

THE PUBLISHERS. 



Christmas, 1912. 



VI 



Contents 



PAGE 

Introduction xi 

Charles Fenno Hoffman . . . i 

Selection from "A Winter in the West" 

Harriet Martineau 27 

Selection from "Society in America" 

John Wentworth 43 

Lecture before the Sunday Lecture Society 

John Wentworth . . . ' . . . .125 

Address at the Reception to the Settlers of 
Chicago Prior to 1840 

John Dean Caton 153 

Address at the Reception to the Settlers of 
Chicago Prior to 1840 

Jonathan Young Scammon . . . .167 

Address at the Reception to the Settlers of 
Chicago Prior to 1840 



Introduction 



3IntroDuctfon 



THE history of Chicago in the early por- 
tion of its cityhood is, to a large extent, 
the history of the American frontier in 
the thirties and early forties. Hence a study 
of early Chicago's people and institutions is 
of more than local interest. To the Chicago 
Historical Society we are indebted for the 
privilege of reprinting, from rare volumes in 
their possession, such matter as illustrates this 
theme from the viewpoint of a well-known New 
York writer, of an Englishwoman of letters, 
and of three typical Chicagoans. 

Mr. Charles Fenno Hoffman, M. A., from 
whose Winter in the West we have selected 
the portion about Chicago, was born in New 
York in 1 806, graduated from Columbia College, 
and in 1827 was admitted to the bar. From 
1833 to 1847 he was editorially connected with 
The American Monthly Magazine, founded 
The Knickerbocker Magazine, edited The New 
York Mirror, and, in 1846-47, instituted The 
Literary World. His Winter in the West, 
published first in the form of letters in The 
American Monthly, was in 1 83 5 brought out 
in book form in New York and London, under 
the pseudonym "A New Yorker.' ' It filled 
two duodecimo volumes, from the first of which 



XI 



^nttobuction 



our selections are made. Poet and novelist, 
as well as editor, Mr. Hoffman was, at the 
time of his visit to Chicago, beginning to be 
regarded as one of America's foremost litte- 
rateurs. Oddly enough, however, it is by his 
two early books of travel, A Winter in the 
West, and Wild Life in Forest and Prairie, 
that he is best known to-day. Mr. Hoffman 
had, in youth, lost a leg through an accident, 
but had persisted with athletic exercise, and 
made the trip to Chicago on horseback. Of 
his adventures by the way and of his impres- 
sions on his arrival we shall learn in the pages 
that follow. 

The next visitor of note to Chicago from 
whom we have derived a picture of the early 
conditions here, was no less a personage than 
Miss Harriet Martineau, the distinguished 
English authoress. In the preface to her work 
on Society in America, published in 1 83 7, she 
states that her object in coming to this country 
was "to compare the existing state of society 
in America with the principles upon which it 
was professedly founded. " In her Autobi- 
ography, written long years after, she states 
that her own choice for a title to the book was 
"Theory and Practice of Society in America" 
— obviously implying a doubt of our adherence 
to those principles. It must be remembered 
that when she came to this country, in 1834, 
America was in the utmost confusion on the 
subject of slavery — a question which England 



^Pntroimttton 



had practically settled at that time. Miss 
Martineau, in response to urgent request, at a 
meeting in favor of Abolition expressed some 
sentiments in favor of equality of the races, and 
was reported as being an advocate of Amalga- 
mation. 

Too considerate and too courageous to be 
intimidated by this, however, Miss Martineau 
continued her tour of the country, visiting all 
sections, and remaining two years. As the 
author of the thirty- four- volume series of Illus- 
trations of Political Economy, besides numerous 
tales for the young, and as the friend of such 
men as Carlyle, James Stuart Mill, Hallam, 
Grote, Browning, Coleridge, and most of 
the other great names in English politics 
and letters — herself, notwithstanding her deaf- 
ness, a woman of much social grace — Miss 
Martineau was well received by all people 
of larger vision. Her interest in political 
matters led her to Washington for the session 
of Congress, where she was sought out by the 
eminent men of all parties, among them Chief 
Justice Marshall, Ex-President Madison, Henry 
Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster. 
Then followed a trip through the South while 
the Virginia Legislature was in session, a long 
visit at the home of Dr. Channing in Newport, 
and a winter in Boston during the session of 
the Massachusetts Legislature. 

"My last journey/' she wrote in the Intro- 
duction to Society in America, from which work 



^ntrotmttion 



we reprint the part devoted to Chicago, "was 
with a party of friends far into the West, 
visiting Niagara again, proceeding by Lake 
Erie to Detroit, and across the territory of 
Michigan. Here we swept around the south- 
ern extremity of Lake Michigan to Chicago, 
went a day's journey down into the prairies, 
back to Chicago, and by Lakes Michigan, 
Huron, and St. Clair to Detroit, visiting Mack- 
inaw by the way, and returned to New York 
from Pittsburg by the canal route through 
Pennsylvania and the railroad over the Alle- 
ghanies. ,, 

That Miss Martineau included Chicago in 
her itinerary is matter of congratulation to its 
inhabitants. In her clear prose are presented 
invaluable portraits of some of our local heroes 
and heroines, and the social atmosphere of the 
place is preserved. In the "wife of the 
Indian agent, " with whom she dined, we recog- 
nize Mrs. John H. Kinzie, the authoress of 
Waubutiy and in what follows, the latter 's 
version of the Fort Dearborn massacre. In 
speaking of the land speculation in Chicago, 
which was at its height during her visit, Miss 
Martineau mentions a young " lawyer" who had 
been "realizing $500 per day for five days by 
merely making out land titles." This lawyer 
has been identified by Mr. Augustus H. Burley 
and by Fernando Jones as Isaac N. Arnold, the 
friend of Lincoln and founder of a family which 
is still of social prominence in Chicago. In the 



Stotrotmctimt 



"town crier" — a familiar figure in the streets — 
has been recognized " Darkey George," or 
George White, whose office took the place of a 
newspaper in announcing land sales. 

It is evident that Chicago was doing her best 
to entertain the distinguished guest, for besides 
the "fancy fair" given on the evening of her 
arrival, Mr. Jones used to speak of going with 
his sister to meet Miss Martineau at the home of 
William B. Ogden, the mayor, and Mr. Burley 
told of a reception being held for her at the home 
of Mrs. John Wright, "at the point where 
Madison Street and Michigan Avenue now 
meet," adding that there was then no other 
house between that point and Fort Dearborn 
on the river bank. At that time Mr. Burley 
was quizzed a little about "getting into a liter- 
ary circle," but explained, with his usual wit, 
that he had come to Chicago a short time 
before and entered his brother's book store, 
hence "knew enough book titles to put on 
literary airs." He added that Chicagoans of 
that time were "fully aware of Miss Martineau's 
importance in the literary world," and that 
"her manners left a favorable impression." 
In this connection it is interesting to note Miss 
Martineau's own comment: "There is some 
allowable pride in the place about its society. It 
is a remarkable thing to meet such an assem- 
blage of educated, refined, and wealthy persons 
as may be found there, living in small, incon- 
venient houses on the edge of a wild prairie." 



introduction 



Turning now to the more intimate annals of 
early Chicago as witnessed by the men actu- 
ally engaged in making history here, we have 
the honor to present to the reader "Long 
John" Wentworth — perhaps our most char- 
acteristic specimen of the early thirties. 

Mr. Hoffman, in describing a ball which he 
attended in Chicago, alludes to the * ' broghans' ' 
worn by the gentlemen. In the Museum of 
the Chicago Historical Society is a certain 
exhibit labeled: "Slipper of Long John Went- 
worth." Had the "New Yorker" seen this 
particular exhibit, a stronger expression than 
"broghans" might have escaped him. The 
slipper measures fourteen inches from stem 
to stern, and five or six through the beam. 
Its owner was built in proportion, measuring 
six feet seven in his stockings, and weighing in 
his prime over three hundred pounds. 

It is said that when Long John arrived in 
Chicago, October 25, 1836, he was barefoot, 
carrying his shoes on a stick over his shoulder, 
and his other baggage in a blue-and-white 
bandanna. Dick Whittington arriving in 
London with nothing but his cat by the way of 
luggage, could hardly have come in humbler 
guise, nor have fulfilled in lordlier fashion the 
later fortune which awaited him. 

The first meal eaten in Chicago by this 
mayor-in-the-making and congressman-to-be 
was served to him by Mrs. John Murphy, in 
the historic Sauganash Hotel. It is said that 



^ntrotmction 



in memory of that meal Long John dined with 
Mrs. Murphy on the anniversary of the occa- 
sion to the end of his life. 

When starting out from his home in New 
Hampshire, young Wentworth had one hun- 
dred dollars in money and two letters of intro- 
duction. The money must have been consumed 
on the long journey, for soon afterlhe arrived 
in Chicago, he is reported to have borrowed 
from Mark Beaubien enough funds to set him 
up as a printer, promising in return to print 
a newspaper. On the twenty-third day of the 
following month he issued Volume I, Number 
I, of The Chicago Weekly Democrat \ and his 
career was begun. 

John Wentworth was born in Sandwich, 
New Hampshire, March 5, 1 81 5, — the grand- 
son of John Wentworth, a member of the Conti- 
nental Congress, and of Amos Cogswell, a 
colonel in the Revolutionary Army. In May, 
1836, he was graduated from Dartmouth Col- 
lege, at the age of twenty-one. 

During the winters of 1 83 6 and 1 83 7 meet- 
ings were being held in Chicago to consider 
the expediency of organizing the little six- 
square-mile village into a city. Long John 
attended these meetings and helped Chicago 
obtain a city charter. 

When matters had reached a point where a 

municipal election was to be held, he became 

secretary of the Nominating Committee. In 

August, 1837, came the convention to nomi- 

xvii 



^tttrotmttion 



nate officers for the County of Cook, and again 
Long John was the secretary. When Chicago's 
first corporation printer was elected, it was 
twenty- two-year-old "Long John" Wentworth 
who secured the office, which he held for the 
better part of twenty-five years, his paper, 
The Weekly Democrat, thus becoming the offi- 
cial organ of the city council. 

In 1840 The Weekly Democrat became a 
daily paper, the chief newspaper of the North- 
west, and, with Long John as its editor, 
publisher, and proprietor, so continued until 
1 86 1, being known as the "hard money" paper 
of the Jackson type. 

Incident to his other labors, Long John 
studied law in Chicago, attended lectures at 
Harvard, and was admitted to the bar in 184 1. 

John Wentworth was elected to the Congress 
of the United States and took' his seat Decem- 
ber 4, 1843, at tne a g e °f twenty-eight, the 
youngest member in the House. He served 
until March 3, 1 85 1, and again from December, 
1853, until March 3, 1 85 5, twelve years in all. 
Of national politics, he wrote: "My con- 
gressional terms embraced every crisis in the 
slavery agitation, beginning with the discussion 
respecting the propriety of annexing Texas, 
and ending with the adoption of the constitu- 
tional amendments establishing the equality of 
all persons before the law." He adds, "In 
view of my frontier residence, the speaker 
placed me upon the Committee upon Terri- 
xviii 



^Fnttotiuction 



tories, and I was the only northwestern man 
upon it. I had to be the mouthpiece upon 
that committee of all the settlements in the 
wilds of Wisconsin and Iowa, extending to the 
British possessions on the north, and to the 
Rocky Mountains on the west." 

A wonderful group of men were in Wash- 
ington in Wentworth's time. In his Congres- 
sional Reminiscences Long John has left us vivid 
personal anecdotes of John Quincy Adams, 
John C. Calhoun, Thomas Benton, Henry 
Clay, and Daniel Webster. 

When Webster had visited Chicago in 1837 
to make his great Whig speech, John Went- 
worth had reviewed it in his Chicago Democrat. 
When the River and Harbor bill of 1846 was 
pending, Wentworth came before the Com- 
mittee to defend the construction of a harbor 
at Little Fort (now Waukegan) in Illinois. 
None of the senators knew the needs of this 
part of the Great Lakes, and the Committee 
was hostile. Long John, meeting Daniel 
Webster in the street in Washington, reminded 
him that on his visit to Chicago in 1837 his 
vessel might have been sunk had a storm arisen 
around the southern end of Lake Michigan. 
With this as a text, Webster made one of his 
great flights of oratory, depicting such a storm. 
The bill passed. President Polk vetoed it. 
"And out of his veto," wrote Wentworth, 
"grew that wonderful event in the history of 
Chicago, the River and Harbor Convention of 
xix 



^nttotmction 



1847, a vast assemblage, composed of the most 
talented, enterprising, wealthy, and influential 
men of all parts of the country.' ' 

On the morning after the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise passed the House, there 
was a gathering of Democrats and Whigs at 
Crutchet's in Washington, and among them 
was John Wentworth. It was resolved to ignore 
all party lines and form an anti-slavery party. 
Out of this grew the Republican party, with 
which Wentworth afterwards acted. 

Long John Wentworth was elected mayor 
of Chicago in 1857, and again in i860 — the 
first Republican mayor elected in the United 
States after the formation of the party. And 
what a mayor he did make! To this day in 
Chicago the older men may be heard to say, 
when certain manifestations of corruption 
appear, "That would not have happened in 
Long John's time." In these days of vice 
investigation and careful dealing with socio- 
logical questions of all kinds, it is not out of 
place to mention the destruction, under Long 
John's leadership, of a far-reaching district of 
disrepute known as "The Sands, ' ' which existed 
near the lake shore, north of Kinzie and east of 
Pine Street. Finding all ordinary and legal 
procedure insufficient, Long John caused to be 
printed a quantity of hand-bills announcing a 
dog fight on the West Side. While the 
denizens of "The Sands" were largely attend- 
ing the dog fight, he, axe-in-hand and followed 



^ntrotmction 



by an army of police, tore down and burned 
their shanties and completely effaced this blot 
on Chicago's lake front. 

Countless legends of Long John's mayoralty 
are current in Chicago. It was one of his 
customs to prowl about the streets at night, 
to ascertain if the police were doing their duty, 
and many a criminal found himself conveyed 
to the lock-up by the long arm of His Honor, 
the Mayor. A saloon-keeper who had cheated 
one of Long John's employees was thus dragged 
bodily across his bar and clapped into jail, 
without a warrant, all for a deficit of thirty- 
five cents in change. 

Wentworth's most distinguished duty dur- 
ing his mayoralty was the entertainment of 
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, who, as a 
stripling on a voyage of discovery, visited 
Chicago. Charles Harpel quotes an intro- 
duction of the Prince to the crowd standing 
around the balcony of the Richmond House: 
"Boys," said Mr. Wentworth, "this is the 
Prince of Wales. He has come here to see 
the city and I am going to show him around. 
Prince, these are the boys!" Another story, 
for which the writer is indebted to Fernando 
Jones, of fruitful memory, is as follows: 
Standing on Rush Street bridge watching the 
loading of a cargo of grain to be shipped to 
Queen Victoria as a gift from the city of 
Chicago, the young prince carelessly spat into 
the grain. "Stop that, young man!" yelled 
xxi 



introduction 



Wentworth. ' 'Don't you know any better than 
to spit into a load of grain that is going to 
your honored mother? Don't let me see you 
do that again!" 

One of John Wentworth' s favorite haunts 
was the Chicago Historical Society. He 
attended every meeting. Finding himself and 
one other the only members present on the 
occasion of a certain quarterly meeting, he 
promptly made the other man secretary, ap- 
pointed himself chairman, and proceeded to 
hold a meeting which was devoted to an hour's 
address on "The Life and Achievements of 
Long John Wentworth" — all duly reported 
in the papers the next day. 

Had John Wentworth possessed no other 
talent, he might have made a name solely as 
an historian. A three-volume history of the 
Wentworth family marks his activities in the 
genealogical field. But his great delight was 
in local history — and Chicago owes the preser- 
vation from oblivion of her earlier years largely 
to the indefatigable researches of this true 
Chicagoan. Nothing was too much trouble. 
At the meetings of the Calumet Club or at the 
Historical Society, where old settlers were 
wont to gather, he would stand for hours reel- 
ing off names of citizens, with the date of their 
arrival, and something about each. He had 
the true historian's instinct — the faculty for 
preserving "local color." And yet he never 
romanced. Employing his large means — for 



Stottotmction 



he died worth a fortune — he amassed from 
every quarter the sources of information, 
and urged upon others the preservation, in a 
fire-proof building, of such things as old news- 
papers, pamphlets, letters, deeds, and the like. 

Among the most valued possessions of the 
Chicago Historical Society is a volume en- 
riched by his own manuscript emendations and 
additions, and containing two addresses, the 
first of which is entitled : * ' Early Chicago, a 
lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture 
Society, at McCormick Hall, on Sunday after- 
noon, May 7, i8j6, by Hon. John Wentworth, 
late editor, publisher and proprietor of the 
c Chicago Democrat, ' the first corporation news- 
paper; member of Congress for the Chicago 
district for twelve years; two terms mayor; 
and a settler of 1836.''* This lecture we here 
reproduce. 

The second occasion upon which Wentworth 
appears in his own person and as the chief 
performer, in this book of Reminiscences, is the 
now famous reception to the settlers of 
Chicago prior to 1840, by the Calumet Club 
of Chicago, Tuesday evening, May 27, 1879. 

It is proposed of late to preserve in libraries 
by means of the phonograph, for future ages, 
the very voices of the speakers on such occa- 
sions. Long John is said to have had a voice 
to match his person. If he had spoken into 
a phonograph what a " record* ' he might 
have made ! In his speeches we have the very 



^Pntrotmction 



quintessence of Chicago. If nothing else ex- 
isted to tell us of "the early day," these frag- 
ments would suffice. They are the more valuable 
in that the speaker felt that he need not impress 
his hearers with his importance. Long John 
was talking to his friends of half a century, and 
no little quip or quirk by which any old-time 
figure could be brought vividly to mind was 
beneath his dignity. 

On October 16, 1888, occurred the death of 
Hon. John Wentworth — in his long-time domi- 
cile, the old Sherman House. The journals 
of the day are full of headlines such as "Long 
John is no more'*; "The remains lying in 
state"; and the obituary notices filled whole 
pages, as if for a President. , But one President 
has ever occupied a larger place in the horizon 
of the state of Illinois, or done more to create 
an actual body politic out of the scattered 
settlers of a nation's frontier. 

On the same platform with John Wentworth 
at that memorable meeting of the Calumet Club 
were two other men who had, each in his way, 
occupied almost as conspicuous a place in 
the public attention of Chicago — Ex-Chief 
Justice John Dean Caton, and the Hon. J. Y. 
Scammon. Both had precedence of Went- 
worth in point of early arrival in Chicago, 
Caton having come in June, 1833, an d Scammon 
in September, 1835. 

John Dean Caton was born in Monroe 
xxiv 



^ntrotmction 



County, New York, March 19, 18 12. His 
grandfather, who was once connected with the 
British Army, settled on the Potomac, in Vir- 
ginia, at the time of the Revolution. His son 
Robert, Judge Caton's father, served through 
the war on the American side, and afterwards 
became a preacher in the Society of Friends. 
John, his twelfth son, at the age of nine began 
work on the farm, attending the district school 
in the winter, and beginning to teach at the 
age of seventeen. Thus far his life is not 
unlike that of the poet Whittier, whom he 
somewhat resembled in appearance, and also 
in his Quaker origin. 

The call of the West was very strong in 
those days, and in 1833, after a short course 
at the Academy at Utica, and in the high 
school at Rome, New York, and in the law 
office of Beardsley & Matteson, he started 
out to seek his fortune in the wilds of Mich- 
igan. Chancing to hear of a place called Chi- 
cago, he came thus far and halted. Chicago 
had no lawyer, and young Caton became its 
attorney. It is said that his office was at 
that time anything but a fixed affair, being 
usually the first convenient corner, with any 
box or barrel that stood there, by way of 
furniture. 

To obtain admission to the bar, John Caton 

was obliged to journey three hundred miles on 

horseback across the prairie and through the 

forest to Greenville, near the Ohio River. In 

xxv 



^Pntrotmction 



1836 he formed a partnership with Norman B. 
Judd, a former schoolmate and friend. In 1839 
he purchased a farm near Plainfield, built a log 
house, and for several years devoted himself to 
farming and to a more exhaustive study of the 
law. Meanwhile he was riding the circuit 
as occasion required, and has left us many 
amusing tales of pioneer experiences in his 
Early Bench and Bar of Illinois, In 1842, 
he was appointed one of the Judges of the 
Supreme Court of Illinois, a position which he 
held until June, 1865. 

When Caton came to Illinois, a single vol- 
ume of law reports existed here — those of 
Judge Sidney Breese. When he left the bench 
he had addeu f -. '^irty volumes of invaluable 
material to these legal resources of Illinois. 

A story is told of Judge Caton which illus- 
trates the primitive conditions in Illinois in 
th forties, though not the Judge's habitual 
frame of mind. At a time when the Supreme 
Judges were receiving only twelve or fifteen 
hundred dollars per annum, Judge Caton went 
into a grocery store one day, purchased a very 
fine sugar-cured ham, and set it down by the 
side of the counter while he engaged in a 
friendly chat with the grocer. Meanwhile, 
a great shaggy ill-favored dog came in, picked 
up the Judge's ham, and made off with it. 
The Judge, however, was not to be done out 
of his property so easily. Overtaking the dog, 
he rescued his ham, administered several very 
xxvi 



^ntroiwction 



hearty kicks to the offender, and addressed him 
in the following terms : 

" You miserable cur! You are the meanest 
dog I ever saw, to come in here and steal this 
ham which has cost me my last dollar. Don't 
you know that I am receiving only the pitiful 
salary of twelve hundred and fifty dollars a 
year? You are mean enough to steal the last 
piece of meat from the lowest shelf in a nig- 
ger's kitchen!" — with which terrible charge 
and a few other unQuakerlike remarks which 
never went into the record, the Judge walked 
off with his ham, leaving the culprit to meditate 
upon the power and dignity of the Supreme 
Bench of Illinois. 

In his Early Bar of Chicago Judge Blodgett, 
a contemporary of Caton's, wiote: "The time 
Judge Caton was a member of that court may 
be called the formative era in our state juris- 
prudence . ' ' Among matters that came before 
Caton were the transfer of the Illinois and 
Michigan Canal to the holders of the state 
bonds for carrying on the work ; the land grant 
to the state for construction of the Illinois 
Central Railroad ; the powers to be allowed to 
railroads in Illinois, as well as to other corpora- 
tions, and land titles in the "Military Tract." 
Judge Caton was one of the first in the West 
to take an interest in telegraphy, — backing his 
faith with funds, — and in 1857 became the 
principal owner of all the telegraph lines in 
Illinois and Iowa. He was exceedingly success- 



^ntrobuctiott 



ful in the management of these properties, 
and, in 1865, transferred them to The Western 
Union Telegraph Company on such terms as 
made him financially independent for life. 

From that time on he devoted himself to 
travel and study, and may be considered as 
one of the most perfect types which the West 
has produced of the cultured scholar who is 
yet a practical man of affairs. Many of his 
scientific studies and records of travel were 
gathered into a volume of Miscellanies, and 
mark how far his thought had gone in the 
direction of scientific and political achievement 
which has since come to pass in America. His 
death occurred on July 30, 1895. 

When Jonathan Young Scammon came upon 
the scene in Chicago there was no free school 
system here. In fact, the newly constituted 
city council had voted against a free school 
law. Scammon was a lawyer — had indeed 
preceded Caton by a few years as official 
reporter for Illinois. He offered to draft a 
law for common schools, and succeeded in get- 
ting it enacted by the legislature of Illinois, 
himself accepting the arduous duties of in- 
spector of schools under the new system. 

There were no railroads in Illinois until 
William B. Ogden, J. Y. Scammon, and a few 
others of their calibre went personally across 
the prairies, all along the line proposed for the 
Galena and Chicago route, persuading the 



Storofcuction 



farmers that a railroad would help them in 
getting their crops to market. The Galena 
and Chicago Union Railroad, chartered in 
1836, but not completed until 1848, was the 
result, and is the nucleus of the Chicago and 
Northwestern system. 

There were no harbor improvements in 
Chicago when Scammon came. His name, 
with those of John Wentworth, George Man- 
ierre, Isaac N. Arnold, and Grant Goodrich, 
was signed to the call for the River and Harbor 
Convention of 1 847. 

In 185 1 J. Y. Scammon became president 
and leading stockholder of The Chicago Marine 
and Fire Insurance Company. The general 
banking law of 185 1 had just been passed, and, 
under its provisions, he established the Marine 
Bank, which was long considered the strong- 
est of the state banks. 

Mr. Scammon came to be a very rich man, 
but his public spirit kept pace with his fortune. 
During the campaign for the support of Lincoln, 
in i860, he published, at his own cost, much of 
the literature that helped to win the day. The 
only political office which he himself held was 
the modest one of membership in the Illinois 
Legislature. 

No Swedenborgian church existed in Illinois 
until Scammon came to Chicago, in 1835, and 
began to hold meetings in his business office, 
which resulted in the establishment of that de- 
nomination in the West. Homoeopathy was 



^ntrobuction 



struggling for a hearing in Illinois, and Scam- 
mon built for this then despised " school' ' the 
Hahnemann Hospital. In like manner, the 
University of Chicago needed something to 
give it prestige in the scientific world, and 
Scammon bought for it the largest lens in 
the world at that time, built for it an obser- 
vatory, and paid the salary of the professor of 
astronomy. 

One of the founders, and president, of 
The Chicago Historical Society, he occupied a 
like office in The Chicago Academy of Sciences 
and in the Astronomical Society. He had a 
hand in the founding of The Chicago Tribune 
and The Chicago Journal, and in 1872 estab- 
lished The Inter-Ocean in a back room of his 
own residence. 

The fire of 187 1 and the panic of 1873 
swept away Mr. Scammon's fortune. He re- 
tired from the banking business and resumed 
his law practice, removing from his handsome 
residence in town to a gardener's cottage on a 
tract of land at South Park. To some men 
this humiliation would have proved too much. 
But life to a man like Scammon meant more 
than money. His interest in Chicago was not 
limited to his own advancement. His far- 
seeing eyes and active hands still continued to 
contribute to the city's welfare. It is signifi- 
cant that he was one of the few chosen to speak 
with Wentworth and Caton at that memorable 
gathering of old residents in 1879, an d tnat 



^Pntrotmctitm 



when he died in 1890, his name had become 
synonymous with the expression "public spirit.' ' 

At this distance from the events set forth in 
this little volume, we are enabled to look back, 
and to see things in something like a true pro- 
portion. We have chosen these few figures 
as typical of the manners of men who consti- 
tuted the Chicago of "the early day." They 
differed greatly one from the other, but, for- 
getting all personal peculiarities, it might be 
said that Wentworth stood for strength of 
purpose, Caton for justice, and Scammon for 
sagacity. Out of these qualities has sprung a 
city. At this Christmas season we shall be 
gratified if this book of " Reminiscences' ' shall 
contribute to a clearer concept of that city and 
of her conquest over circumstance. 

Mabel McIlvaine. 



Reminiscences of Early Chicago 



e^arteg tfenno Hoffman 

[From "A Winter in the West."] 



Chicago, January i, 1834. 

WE left the prairie on the east, after 
passing through "the door," and 
entered a forest, where the enormous 
black walnut and sycamore trees cumbered the 
soil with trunks from which a comfortable 
dwelling might be excavated. The road was 
about as bad as could be imagined; and after 
riding so long over prairies as smooth as a turn- 
pike, the stumps and fallen trees over which 
we were compelled to drive, with the deep 
mud-holes into which our horses continually 
plunged, were anything but agreeable. Still, 
the stupendous vegetation of the forest inter- 
ested me sufficiently to make the time, other- 
wise enlivened by good company, pass with 
sufficient fleetness, though we made hardly 
more than two miles an hour throughout the 
stage. At last, after passing several unten- 
anted sugar camps of the Indians, we reached 
a cabin, prettily situated on the banks of a 
lively brook winding through the forest. A 
little Frenchman waited at the door to receive 
our horses, while a couple of half-intoxicated 
Indians followed us into the house, in the hope 
of getting a'netos (vulgarly, "a treat") from 
1 



Mtmmi$tmtt$ of <£arip Chicago 

the new-comers. The usual settlers' dinner 
of fried bacon, venison cutlets, hot cakes, and 
wild honey, with some tolerable tea and Indian 
sugar — as that made from the maple tree is 
called at the West — was soon placed before us; 
while our new driver, the frizzy little French- 
man already mentioned, harnessed a fresh 
team, and hurried us into the wagon as soon 
as possible. The poor little fellow had thirty 
miles to drive before dark, on the most diffi- 
cult part of the route of the line between 
Detroit and Chicago. It was easy to see that 
he knew nothing of driving, the moment he 
took his reins in hand; but when one of my 
fellow travelers mentioned that little Victor 
had been preferred to his present situation of 
trust from the indefatigable manner in which, 
before the stage route was established last 
season, he had for years carried the mail 
through this lonely country — swimming rivers 
and sleeping in the woods at all seasons — it 
was impossible to dash the mixture of boyish 
glee and official pomposity with which he entered 
upon his duties, by suggesting any improvement 
as to the mode of performing them. Away 
then we went, helter-skelter, through the 
woods — scrambled through a brook, and gal- 
loping over an arm of the prairie, struck again 
into the forest. A fine stream called the 
Calamine made our progress here more gentle 
for a moment. But immediately on the other 
side of the river was an Indian trading-post, 

2 



€f>arfe£ tfmm ^offtaan 

and our little French Phaeton — who, to tell 
the truth, had been repressing his fire for the 
last half- hour, while winding among the decayed 
trees and broken branches of the forest — could 
contain no longer. He shook the reins on his 
wheel-horses, and cracked up his leaders, with 
an air that would have distinguished him on 
the Third Avenue, and been envied at Cato's. 
He rises in his seat as he passes the trading 
house; he sweeps by like a whirlwind: but a 
female peeps from the portal, and it is all over 
with poor Victor. 

"Ah, wherefore did he turn to look? 
That pause, that fatal gaze he took, 
Hath doomed — " 

his discomfiture. The infuriate car strikes a 
stump, and the unlucky youth shoots off at a 
tangent, as if he were discharged from a mortar. 
The whole operation was completed with such 
velocity, that the first intimation I had of what 
was going forward, was on finding myself two 
or three yards from the shattered wagon, with 
a tall Indian in a wolf-skin cap standing over 
me. My two fellow passengers were dislodged 
from their seats with the same want of cere- 
mony; but though the disjecta membra of our 
company were thus prodigally scattered about, 
none of us, providentially, received injury. 
Poor Victor was terribly crestfallen; and had 
he not unpacked his soul by calling upon all 
the saints in the calendar, in a manner more 
familiar than respectful, I verily believe that his 
3 



&tmim$tmtt$ of <£arip Chicago 

tight little person would have exploded like 
a torpedo. A very respectable looking Indian 
female, the wife, probably, of the French gen- 
tleman who owned the post, came out, and 
civilly furnished us with basins and towels to 
clean our hands and faces, which were sorely 
bespattered with mud; while the gray old Indian 
before mentioned assisted in collecting our 
scattered baggage. 

The spot where our disaster occurred was a 
sequestered, wild looking place. The trading 
establishment consisted of six or eight log 
cabins, of a most primitive construction, all of 
them gray with age, and so grouped on the 
bank of the river as to present an appearance 
quite picturesque. There was not much time, 
however, to be spent observing its beauties. 
The sun was low, and we had twenty-five miles 
yet to travel that night, before reaching the only 
shantee on the lake shore. My companions 
were compelled to mount two of the stage 
horses, while I once more put the saddle on 
mine; and leaving our trunks to follow a week 
hence, we slung our saddle-bags across the 
cruppers, and pushed directly ahead. 

A few miles' easy riding through the woods 
brought us to a dangerous morass, where we 
were compelled to dismount and drive our 
horses across, one of the party going in advance 
to catch them on the other side. A mile or 
two of pine barrens now lay between us and 
the shore, and winding rapidly among the 
4 



€§az\t$ f enno I^offtmn 

short hills, covered with this stinted growth, 
we came suddenly upon a mound of white sand 
at least fifty feet high. Another of these deso- 
late looking eminences, still higher, lay beyond. 
We topped it; and there, far away before us, 
lay the broad bosom of Lake Michigan, — the 
red disk of the sun just sinking beneath it, and 
the freshening night breeze beginning to curl its 
limpid waters on the shore; and now, having 
gained their verge, whichever way we turned, 
there was nothing discernible but the blacken- 
ing lake on one side and these conical hills of 
shifting white sand on the other. Some of 
them, as the night advanced and objects were 
only discernible by the bright starlight, assumed 
a most fantastic appearance, and made me 
regret that I could not visit the " Sleeping 
Bear," and other singularly formed mounds, 
which many miles further to the north, swell 
from two to three hundred feet above the level 
of the lake. The deep sand, into which our 
horses sunk to the fetlocks, was at first most 
wearisome to the poor beasts; and having 
twenty miles yet to travel entirely on the lake 
shore, we were compelled, in spite of the danger 
of quicksands, to move as near the water as 
possible. But though the day had been mild, 
the night rapidly became so cold that, before 
we had proceeded thus many miles, the beach 
twenty yards from the surf was nearly as hard 
as stone, and the finest Macadamized road in 
the world could not compare with the one over 
5 



MtmM$tmtt$ of €arip Chicago 

which we now galloped. Nor did we want 
lamps to guide us on our way. Above, the 
stars stood out like points of light; while the 
resplendent fires of the Aurora Borealis, shoot- 
ing along the heavens on our right, were mocked 
by the livid glare of the Kankakee marshes, 
burning behind the sand hills on our left. The 
lake alone looked dark and lowering; though 
even its gathering waves would smile when 
touched with light as they broke upon the 
shore. The intense cold seemed to invigorate 
our horses; and dashing the fire from the 
occasional pebbles, they clattered along the 
frozen beach at a rate that brought us rapidly 
to our destination for the night. 

It was a rude cabin, built of stems of the 
scrub pine, standing behind a sandy swell 
about two hundred yards from the shore. My 
fingers were* numb with cold; and seeing a 
rough-looking fellow moving from the door 
towards the horses of my companions, I 
requested him to take mine also; but, upon 
his politely rejoining that "he was nobody's 
servant but his own," I could only wish him 
"a. more civil master/ ' and proceeded to take 
care of the animal myself. A brake of stunted 
evergreens near by supplied the place of a stable; 
and passing a wisp of dry grass over the reeking 
limbs of my four-footed friend, I flung my cloak 
over his back, and tethered him for the night. 
The keeper of the rustic hostelrie came up just 
as I had got through with this necessary task, 
6 



Cljarieg tftnxm i^offtmtt 

and explaining to me that the insolent lounger 
was a discharged mail carrier, returned with 
me to the house for a measure of corn; while 
I, guided by the light flickering through the 
crevices of his frail dwelling, rejoined my com- 
panions nestled with two other half-frozen 
travelers around the grateful fire within. The 
strangers were both western men; one, I 
believe, a farmer, for some time settled in 
Illinois, and the other an Indian trader of long 
standing in Chicago. War-like incidents in 
border story, and the pacific dealings between 
the whites and Indians, formed the chief sub- 
jects of conversation, which soon became gen- 
eral, and was prolonged to a late hour; finally 
the late treaty held at Chicago — at which, as 
you have probably seen in the newspapers, 
several thousand Indians were present — was 
discussed, and the anecdotes that were told of 
meanness, rapacity, and highway robbery (in 
cheating, stealing, and forcibly taking away) 
from the Indians, exasperated me so that I 
expressed my indignation and disgust in un- 
measured terms. The worthy trader, who 
was a middle-aged man, of affable, quiet good 
manners, seemed to sympathize with me 
throughout; but the whole current of my feel- 
ings was totally changed, when, upon my 
observing shortly afterward to another gentle- 
man, that "I should have liked to have been 
at Chicago a year ago," my warm coadjutor 
ejaculated from under the bed-clothes, where 



*Semiragcence£ of <£arip Chicago 

he had in the meantime bestowed himself, 
"Ah, sir, if you had, the way in which you'd 
have hook'd an Indian blanket by this time, 
would be curious." The chivalric Knight of 
La Mancha himself could not have sustained 
heroics under such a home thrust, but must 
have burst into the hearty laugh in which I was 
joined by all present. The hour of sleep for 
all at last arrived, and a couple of wooden 
bunks, swung from the roof, falling to the lot 
of those who had come in first, I wrapped 
myself in a buffalo-skin, and placing my saddle 
under my head for a pillow, soon "slept like 
a king," a term which, if 

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" 

be true doctrine, is, probably, quasi lucus, &c. 
Our transient acquaintances parted from us 
in a most friendly manner in the morning; and 
after waiting in vain till near noon, to see if by 
any chance little Victor might not be able to 
forward our trunks to this point, we mounted 
once more, and pushed ahead with all speed, 
to accomplish the remaining twenty or thirty 
miles between the shantee and Chicago. Our 
route was still along the srjpre; and after pass- 
ing round the end of the lake and taking a 
northwardly direction, the way in which the icy 
blast would come down the bleak shore of the 
lake "was a caution." We galloped at full 
speed, every man choosing his own route along 
the beach, our horses' hoofs ringing the while 
8 



€f*arle£ f mno i^of&nan 

as if it were a pavement of flint beneath them. 
The rough ice piled up on the coast prevented 
us from watering our beasts; and we did not 
draw a rein till the rushing current of the 
Calamine, which debouches into Lake Michi- 
gan some ten miles from Chicago, stayed our 
course. A cabin on the bank gave us a mo- 
ment's opportunity to warm, and then, being 
ferried over the wintry stream, we started with 
fresh vigor, and crossing about a mile of 
prairie in the neighborhood of Chicago, reached 
here in time for an early dinner. Our horses 
this morning seem none the worse for this furi- 
ous riding; their escape from ill consequences 
being readily attributable to the excellence of 
the road, and the extreme coldness of the 
weather while traveling it. For my own part, 
I never felt better than after this violent burst 
of exercise. 

We had not been here an hour before an in- 
vitation to a public ball was courteously sent 
to us by the managers; and though my soiled 
and travel-worn riding dress was not exactly 
the thing to present one's self in before ladies 
of an evening, yet, in my earnestness to see 
life on the frontier, I easily allowed all objec- 
tions to be overruled by my companions, and 
we accordingly drove to the house in which the 
ball was given. It was a frame building, one 
of the few as yet to be found in Chicago; which, 
although one of the most ancient French 
trading posts on the Lakes, can only date its 
9 



JSemmigcenceg of <£arfp Chicago 

growth as a village since the Indian war eighteen 
months since. When I add that the popula- 
tion has quintupled last summer, and that but 
few mechanics have come in with the prodi- 
gious increase of residents, you can readily 
imagine that the influx of strangers far exceeds 
the means of accommodation; while scarcely 
a house in the place, however comfortable 
looking outside, contains more than two or three 
finished rooms. In the present instance, we 
were ushered into a tolerably sized dancing 
room, occupying the second story of the house, 
and having its unfinished walls so ingeniously 
covered with pine branches and flags borrowed 
from the garrison, that, with the whitewashed 
ceiling above, it presented a very complete and 
quite pretty appearance. It was not so warm, 
however, that the fires of cheerful hickory, 
which roared at either end, could have been 
readily dispensed with. An orchestra of un- 
planed boards was raised against the wall in 
the center of the room; the band consisting of 
a dandy negro with his violin, a fine military 
looking bass drummer from the fort, and a vol- 
unteer citizen, who alternately played an 
accompaniment upon the flute and triangle. 
Blackee, who flourished about with a great 
many airs and graces, was decidedly the king 
of the company; and it was amusing, while 
his head followed the direction of his fiddle- 
bow with pertinacious fidelity, to see the Cap- 
tain Manual-like precision with which the 
10 



<fflf>atfeg f mm iJJof&nan 

soldier dressed to the front on one side, and the 
nonchalant air of importance which the cit 
attempted to preserve on the other. 

As for the company, it was such a complete 
medley of all ranks, ages, professions, trades, 
and occupations, brought together from all 
parts of the world, and now for the first time 
brought together, that it was amazing to wit- 
ness the decorum with which they commingled 
on this festive occasion. The managers (among 
whom were some officers of the garrison) must 
certainly be au fait at dressing a lobster and 
mixing regent's punch, in order to have pro- 
duced a harmonious compound from such a 
collection of contrarieties. The gayest figure 
that was ever called by quadrille-playing 
Benoit never afforded me half the amusement 
that did these Chicago cotillons. Here you 
might see a veteran officer in full uniform bal- 
ancing to a tradesman's daughter still in her 
short frock and trowsers, while there the golden 
aiguillette of a handsome surgeon flapped in 
unison with the glass beads upon a scrawny 
neck of fifty. In one quarter, the high-placed 
buttons of a linsey-woolsey coat would be dos 
a dos to the elegantly turned shoulders of a deli- 
cate looking southern girl; and in another, a 
pair of Cinderella-like slippers would chassez 
cross with a brace of thick-soled broghans, in 
making which, one of the lost feet of the 
Colossus of Rhodes may have served for a last. 
Those raven locks, dressed a la Madonne, over 
ii 



jHeminigcenceg of <£arip Chicago 

eyes of jet, and touching a cheek where blood 
of a deeper hue mingles with the less glowing 
current from European veins, tell of a lineage 
drawn from the original owners of the soil; 
while these golden tresses, floating away from 
eyes of heaven's own color over a neck of 
alabaster, recall the Gothic ancestry of some of 
"England's born. ,, How piquantly do these 
trim and beaded leggins peep from under that 
simple dress of black, as its tall nut-brown 
wearer moves as if unconsciously through the 
graceful mazes of the dance. How diverting- 
ly do those inflated gigots, rising like windsails 
from that little Dutch-built hull, jar against 
those tall plumes which impend over them like 
a commodore's pennant on the same vessel. 

But what boots all these incongruities, when 
a spirit of festive good humor animates every 
one present? "It takes all kinds of people to 
make a world," (as I hear it judiciously ob- 
served this side of the mountains,) and why 
should not all these kinds of people be repre- 
sented as well in a ball-room as in a legislature? 
At all events, if I wished to give an intelligent 
foreigner a favorable opinion of the manners 
and deportment of my countrymen in the 
aggregate, I should not wish a better oppor- 
tunity, after explaining to him the materials of 
which it was composed, and the mode in which 
they were brought together from every section 
of the union, than was afforded by this very 
ball. "This is a scene of enchantment to me, 

12 



€&arie£ f enno ^offtaan 

sir," observed an officer to me, recently ex- 
changed to this post, and formerly stationed 
here. "There were but a few traders around 
the fort when I last visited Chicago; and now 
I can't contrive where the devil all these well 
dressed people have come from!" I referred 
him to an old resident of three months stand- 
ing, to whom I had just been introduced, but 
he could throw no light upon the subject; and 
we left the matter of peopling Chicago in the 
same place where philosophers have put the 
question of the original peopling of the conti- 
nent. I made several new acquaintances at 
this new-year's ball, and particularly with the 
officers of the garrison, from whose society I 
promise myself much pleasure during my stay. 
The geographical position of Chicago is so 
important, that I must give you a more minute 
description of the place in my next. Would 
that in folding this I could enclose you half 
the warm wishes for your welfare which the 
season awakens in my bosom ! 



Chicago, Illinois, January 10, 1834. 
I have been here more than ten days, with- 
out fulfilling the promise given in my last. It 
has been so cold, indeed, as almost to render 
writing impracticable in a place so comfort- 
less. The houses were built with such rapidity, 
during the summer, as to be mere shells; and 
the thermometer having ranged as low as 28 
13 



jSemmigcenceg of <£arip €J>icago 

below zero, during several days it has been 
almost impossible, notwithstanding the large 
fires kept up by an attentive landlord, to pre- 
vent the ink from freezing while using it, and 
one's fingers become so numb in a very few 
moments when thus exercised, that, after vainly 
trying to write in gloves, I have thrown by my 
pen, and joined the group, composed of all the 
household, around the barroom fire. This 
room, which is an old log cabin aside of the 
main house, is one of the most comfortable 
places in town, and is, of course, much fre- 
quented; business being, so far as one can 
judge from the concourse that throng it, nearly 
at a standstill. Several persons have been 
severely frost-bitten in passing from door to 
door; and not to mention the quantity of poul- 
try and pigs that have been frozen, an ox, I 
am told, has perished from cold in the streets 
at noonday. An occasional Indian, wrapped 
in his blanket, and dodging about from store to 
store after a dram of whiskey, or a muffied- 
up Frenchman, driving furiously in his cariole 
on the river, are almost the only human beings 
abroad; while the wolves, driven in by the 
deep snows which preceded this severe weather, 
troop through the town after nightfall, and 
may be heard howling continually in the midst 
of it. 

The situation of Chicago, on the edge of the 
Grand Prairie, with the whole expanse of Lake 
Michigan before it, gives the freezing winds 

14 



C&arieg f enno ^offtaan 

from the Rocky Mountains prodigious effect, 
and renders a degree of temperature which in 
sheltered situations is but little felt, almost 
painful here. 

"The bleak winds 

Do sorely ruffle; for many a mile about, 

There's scarce a bush." 

The town lies upon a dead level, along the 
banks of a narrow forked river, and is spread 
over a wide extent of surface to the shores of 
the lake, while vessels of considerable draught 
of water can, by means of the river, unload in 
the centre of the place. I believe I have 
already mentioned that four fifths of the popu- 
lation have come in since last spring: the 
erection of new buildings during the summer 
has been in the same proportion; and although 
a place of such mushroom growth can, of course, 
boast of but little solid improvement in the 
way of building, yet contracts have been made 
for the ensuing season which must soon give 
Chicago much of that metropolitan appearance 
it is destined so promptly to assume. As a 
place of business, its situation at the central 
head of the Mississippi Valley will make it the 
New Orleans of the North; and its easy and 
close intercourse with the most flourishing 
eastern cities will give it the advantage, as its 
capital increases, of all their improvements in 
the mode of living. 

There is one improvement to be made, how- 
ever, in this section of the country, which will 
15 



Mtmmx$tmtt$ of <£arip Chicago 

greatly influence the permanent value of prop- 
erty in Chicago. I allude to a canal from the 
head of Lake Michigan to the head of steam 
navigation on the Illinois, the route of which 
has been long since surveyed. The distance 
to be overcome is something like ninety miles; 
and when you remember that the headwaters 
of the Illinois rise within eleven miles of 
Chicago River, and that a level plain of not 
more than eight feet elevation above the latter 
is the only intervening obstacle, you can con- 
ceive how easy it would be to drain Lake 
Michigan into the Mississippi by this route; 
boats of eighteen tons having actually passed 
over the intervening prairie at high water. Lake 
Michigan, which is several feet or more above 
Lake Erie, would afford such a never-failing 
body of water that it would keep steamboats 
afloat on the route in the dryest season. St. 
Louis would then be brought comparatively 
near to New York, while two thirds of the 
Mississippi Valley would be supplied by this 
route immediately from the markets of the 
latter. This canal is the only remaining link 
wanting to complete the most stupendous chain 
of inland communication in the world. I had 
a long conversation this morning, on the sub- 
ject, with Major H.,the United States engineer, 
who is engaged in superintending the construc- 
tion of a pier at this place. He was polite 
enough to sketch the main features of the route 
with his pencil, in such a manner as to make 
16 



€t>arie£ f onto Hoffman 

its feasibility very apparent. The canal would 
pass for the whole distance through a prairie 
country, where every production of the field 
and the garden can be raised with scarcely any 
toil, and where the most prolific soil in the 
world requires no other preparation for planting 
than passing the plough over its bosom. The 
most effectual mode of making this canal would 
be to give the lands along its banks to an 
incorporated company, who should construct 
the work within a certain time. The matter 
is now merely agitated at elections as a polit- 
ical handle. 

January 13. 
I had got thus far in a letter to you, when 
several officers of the garrison, to whom I am 
indebted for much hospitable attention and 
many agreeable hours, stopped opposite the 
door with a train of carioles, in one of which I 
was offered a seat, to witness a pacing-match on 
the ice. There were several ladies with gentle- 
men in attendance already on the river, all 
muffled up, after the Canadian fashion, in fur 
robes, whose gay trimmings presented a rich 
as well as most comfortable appearance. The 
horses from which the most sport was expected 
were a black pony bred in the country and a 
tall roan nag from the lower Mississippi. They 
paced at the rate of a mile in something less 
than three minutes. I rode behind the winning 
horse one heat, and the velocity with which he 
made our cariole fly over the smooth ice was 

17 



$itmim$tmtt$ of <£arlp €ftica0o 

almost startling. The Southern horse won the 
race; but I was told that in nine cases out of 
ten, the nags from his part of the country 
could not stand against a French pony. 

In the middle of the chase, a wolf, probably 
roused by the sleigh-bells from his lair on the 
river's bank, trotted along the prairie above, 
within gunshot, calmly surveying the sport. 
The uninvited presence of this long-haired 
amateur at once suggested a hunt for the 
morrow, and arrangements were accordingly 
made, by the several gentlemen present, for 
the most exciting of sports, a wolf-chase on 
horseback. 

I was not present at the assembling of the 
hunt; and the first intimation I had of the game 
being afoot was from hearing the cry of hounds 
and the shouting of a party of horsemen, as 
they clattered along the frozen river, with two 
prairie wolves and one gray wolf running at 
full speed, about a pistol-shot ahead of them. 
One wolf was killed, and another had made 
his escape before I joined the party. But the 
third, the gray wolf, which had struck off into 
the prairie, was still fresh when I came into 
the hunt with an untired horse. But one of 
the hunters had been able to keep up with him, 
and him I could distinguish a mile off in the 
prairie, turning and winding his foaming horse 
as the wolf would double every moment upon 
his tracks, while half-a-dozen dogs, embarrassed 
in the deep snow, were slowly coming up. I 
18 



€|>arieg jfemto Hoffman 

reached the spot just as the wolf first stood at 
bay. His bristling back, glaring eyes, and 
ferociously distended jaws might have appalled 
the dogs for a moment, when an impetuous 
greyhound, who had been for some time push- 
ing through the snowdrifts with unabated 
industry, having now attained a comparatively 
clear spot of ground, leaped with such force 
against the flank of the wolf as to upset him in 
an instant, while the greyhound shot far ahead 
of the quarry. He recovered himself instantly, 
but not before a fierce, powerful hound, whose 
thick neck and broad muzzle indicated a cross 
of the bulldog blood with that of a nobler 
strain, had struck him first upon the haunch, 
and was now trying to grapple him by the 
throat. Down again he went, rolling over and 
over in the deep snow, while the clicking of 
his jaws, as he snapped eagerly at each mem- 
ber of the pack that by turns beset him, was 
distinctly audible. The powerful dog already 
mentioned secured him at last, by fixing his 
muzzle deeply into the breast of the prostrate 
animal. This, however, did not prevent the 
wolf giving some fearful wounds to the other 
dogs which beset him; and, accordingly, with 
the permission of the gentleman who had led 
the chase, I threw myself from my horse and 
gave the game the coup de grace with a dirk- 
knife which I carried about me. The success 
of this hunt induced us, upon the spot, to 
appoint another for this day. 

19 



JSemmigcenceg of <£arip Chicago 

It was a fine bracing morning, with the sun 
shining cheerily through the still cold atmos- 
phere far over the snow-covered prairie, when 
the party assembled in front of my lodgings, to 
the number of ten horsemen, all well mounted 
and eager for the sport. The hunt was divided 
into two squads, one of which was to follow the 
windings of the river on the ice, and the other 
to make a circuit on the prairie. A pack of 
dogs, consisting of a greyhound or two for 
running game, with several of a heavier and 
fiercer breed for pulling it down, accompanied 
each party. I was attached to that which took 
the river: and it was a beautiful sight, as our 
friends trotted off in the prairie, to see their 
different colored capotes and gayly equipped 
horses contrasted with the bright carpet of 
spotless white over which they rode, while the 
sound of their voices was soon lost to our ears, 
as we descended to the channel of the river, 
and their lessening figures were hid from our 
view by the low brush which in some places 
skirted its banks. The brisk trot in which we 
now broke, brought us rapidly to the place of 
meeting, where, to the disappointment of each 
party, it was found that neither had started any 
game. We now spread ourselves into a broad 
line, about gunshot apart from each other, and 
began thus advancing into the prairie. We had 
not swept it thus more than a mile, when a 
shout on the extreme left, with the accelerated 
pace of the two furthermost riders in that direc- 

20 



€ftarie£ jpenno Hoffman 

tion, told that they had roused a wolf. ' 'The 
devil take the hinder-most" was now the motto 
of the company, and each one spurred for 
the spot with all eagerness. Unhappily, how- 
ever, the land along the bank of the river, on the 
right, was so broken by ravines, choked up with 
snow, that it was impossible for us, who were 
half a mile from the game when started, to come 
up at all with two or three horsemen who led 
the pursuit. Our horses sunk to their cruppers 
in the deep snowdrift. Some were repeatedly 
thrown: and one or two, breaking their saddle- 
girths, from the desperate struggles their 
horses made in the snowbanks, were compelled 
to abandon the chase entirely. My stout roan 
carried me bravely through all; but when I 
emerged from the last ravine on the open plain, 
the two horsemen who led the chase, from 
some inequality in the surface of the prairie, 
were not visible; while the third, a fleet rider, 
whose tall figure and Indian headdress had 
hitherto guided me, had been just unhorsed, 
and abandoning the game afoot, was now 
wheeling off apparently with some other object 
in view. Following on the same course, we 
soon encountered a couple of officers in a 
train, who were just coming from a mission 
of charity in visiting the half-starved orphans 
of a poor woman who was frozen to death on 
the prairie a day or two since — the wolves 
having already picked her bones before her 
fate became known. One by one, our whole 

21 



Jtemnigcmceg of <£arip Chicago 

party collected around to make inquiries about 
the poor children, and the two fortunate hun- 
ters soon after joined us, one of them with 
a large prairie wolf hanging to the saddle- 
bow. 

It was now about eleven o'clock; we were 
only twelve miles from Chicago; and though 
we had kept up a pretty round pace, consider- 
ing the depth of the snow, in coursing back- 
ward and forward since eight, our horses 
generally were yet in good condition, and we 
scattered once more over the prairie, with the 
hope of rousing more game. 

Not ten minutes elapsed before a wolf, 
breaking from the dead weeds which, shooting 
eight or ten feet above the level of the snow, 
indicated the banks of a deep ravine, dashed 
off into the prairie pursued by a horseman on 
the right. He made instantly for the deep 
banks of the river, one of whose windings was 
within a few hundred yards. He had a bold 
rider behind him, however, in the gentleman 
who led the chase (a young educated half-blood, 
of prepossessing manners, and well connected 
at Chicago). The precipitous bank of the 
stream did not retard this hunter for a moment, 
but dashing down to the bed of the river, he 
was hard upon the wolf before he could ascend 
the elevation on the opposite side. Four of 
us only reached the open prairie beyond in 
time to take part in the chase. Nothing could 
be more beautiful. There was not an obstacle 

22 



€|>arie£ tfenno i^of&nan 

to oppose us in the open plain; and all our 
dogs having long since given out, nothing re- 
mained but to drive the wolf to death on horse- 
back. Away, then, we went, shouting on his 
track; the hotly pursued beast gaining on us 
whenever the crust of deep snowdrift gave him 
an advantage over the horse, and we in our 
turn nearly riding over him when we came to 
ground comparatively bare. The sagacious 
animal became at last aware that his course 
would soon be up at this rate, and, turning 
rapidly in his tracks as we were scattered over 
the prairie, he passed through our line and 
made at once again for the river. He was cut 
off, and turned in a moment by a horseman 
on the left, who happened to be a little behind 
the rest; and now came the keenest part of the 
sport. The wolf would double every moment 
upon his tracks, while each horseman in suc- 
cession would make a dash at, and turn him in 
a different direction. Twice I was near enough 
to strike him with a horsewhip, and once he 
was under my horse's feet; while so furiously 
did each rider push at him, that as we brushed 
by each other and confronted horse to horse, 
while riding from different quarters at full speed, 
it required one somewhat used "to turn and 
wind a fiery Pegasus" to maintain his seat at 
all. The rascal, who would now and then look 
over his shoulder and gnash his teeth, seemed 
at last as if he was about to succumb — when, 
after running a few hundred yards in an oblique 
23 



jSemmigcenceg of <£atlp Chicago 

direction from the river, he suddenly veered 
his course, at a moment when everyone thought 
his strength was spent; and, gaining the bank 
before he could be turned, he disappeared in 
an instant. The rider nearest his heels became 
entangled in the low boughs of a tree which 
grew near the spot; while I, who followed 
next, was thrown out sufficiently to give the 
wolf time to get out of view, by my horse bolt- 
ing as he reached the sudden edge of the river. 
The rest of the hunt were consequently at fault 
when they came up to us; and after trying in 
vain to track our lost quarry over the smooth 
ice for half an hour, we were most vexatiously 
compelled to abandon the pursuit as fruitless, 
and return to the village with only one scalp as 
the reward of our morning's labor. 

It was with no enviable feelings, I assure 
you, that, on making my arrangements, an hour 
ago, to start in the new line of stage-coaches 
which has just been established between this 
point and St. Louis, I found myself compelled 
to part with the friend to whom I was chiefly 
indebted for my share in the glorious sports I 
have just attempted to describe to you — the 
four-footed companion of my last six weeks' 
rambles. I remember being once struck with 
the remark of an ingenious writer, in the 
Library of Useful Knowledge, when, in dis- 
cussing the real and relative value of horses, he 
observes that the commonest hackney, if in 
every respect suiting his owner, is priceless 
24 



€§azlt$ f enno J^offrnan 

to the possessor. A favorite horse, in fact, 
though his estimation may only depend upon the 
whim of his master, is one of this world's goods 
which can never be thoroughly replaced. It is 
not, however, when the charge of such property 
falls exclusively to grooms and others, from 
one end of the year to another, that you feel 
its value. The stall-fed palfrey, which you 
drive along a turnpike from one hotel to another, 
and abandon when he falls sick for some 
other means of conveyance, with as little con- 
cern as you would exchange your trunk for a 
portmanteau, or vice versa, has but little hold 
on one's feelings in comparison with the hearty 
animal with which you wander away, where he 
meets with no care but such as you bestow 
upon him; and when you in turn become wholly 
dependent upon him for overcoming distances 
and difficulties between places so remote from 
each other, that not only your comfort, but 
sometimes your personal safety, depend upon 
accomplishing the intervals within certain pe- 
riods — when you push ahead through falling 
sleet, ford rivers, plunge through snowbanks, 
or cross morasses, where the matted grass, 
spreading its carpet over the shaking slough, 
embarrasses and wearies the step of your saga- 
cious quadruped, while it prevents his feet from 
sinking into the dangerous quagmire beneath. 
Three weeks of such intercourse between man 
and brute are like three rainy days when one 
is shut up in a country house with strangers. 
25 



$itmmx$tmtt$ of <£arip Chicago 

They cherish a fellowship more cordial than 
years of ordinary intercourse could engender. 
It is no little consolation to me that I leave my 
Bucephalus in excellent hands; nor does this 
necessary separation so engross my sympathies 
that I have none to spare for other partings. 
Upon these, however, I shall not dilate here, 
though you must not be surprised to find me 
returning more than once hereafter to charac- 
ters, scenes, and incidents at Chicago which I 
have hitherto left untouched. 



26 



Harriet fflattiwau 

[From " Society in America."] 



CHICAGO looks raw and bare, standing 
on the high prairie above the lake shore. 
The houses appeared all insignificant, 
and run up in various directions, without any 
principle at all. A friend of mine who resides 
there had told me that we should find the inns 
intolerable at the period of the great land sales, 
which bring a concourse of speculators to the 
place. It was even so. The very sight of 
them was intolerable, and there was not room 
for our party among them all. I do not know 
what we should have done (unless to betake 
ourselves to the vessels in the harbor) if our 
coming had not been foreknown and most 
kindly provided for. We were divided between 
three families, who had the art of removing 
all our scruples about intruding on perfect 
strangers. None of us will lose the lively and 
pleasant associations with the place which were 
caused by the hospitalities of its inhabitants. 

I never saw a busier place than Chicago 
was at the time of our arrival. The streets 
were crowded with land speculators, hurrying 
from one sale to another. A negro, dressed 
up in scarlet, bearing a scarlet flag, and riding 
a white horse with housings of scarlet, 
27 



*5emmigcmteg of €arip Chicago 

announced the times of sale. At every street 
corner where he stopped, the crowd flocked 
round him; and it seemed as if some preva- 
lent mania infected the whole people. The 
rage for speculation might fairly be so regarded. 
As the gentlemen of our party walked the 
streets, storekeepers hailed them from their 
doors, with offers of farms and all manner of 
land lots, advising them to speculate before 
the price of land rose higher. A young lawyer 
of my acquaintance there had realized five 
hundred dollars per day the five preceding 
days, by merely making out titles to land. 
Another friend had realized, in two years, ten 
times as much money as he had before fixed 
upon as a competence for life. Of course, 
this rapid money making is a merely tempo- 
rary evil. A bursting of the bubble must 
come soon. The absurdity of the speculation 
is so striking that the wonder is that the fever 
should have attained such a height as I wit- 
nessed. The immediate occasion of the bustle 
which prevailed, the week we were at Chicago, 
was the sale of lots to the value of two millions 
of dollars along the course of a projected canal, 
and of another set immediately behind these. 
Persons not intending to game, and not infected 
with mania, would endeavor to form some 
reasonable conjecture as to the ultimate value 
of the lots, by calculating the cost of the canal, 
the risks from accident, from the possible com- 
petition from other places, etc., and, finally, 
28 



Harriet ^arttmau 



the possible profits, under the most favorable 
circumstances, within so many years' purchase. 
Such a calculation would serve as some sort of 
guide as to the amount of purchase-money to 
be risked. Whereas, wild land on the banks 
of a canal not yet even marked out, was selling 
at Chicago for more than rich land, well im- 
proved, in the finest part of the valley of the 
Mohawk, on the banks of a canal which is 
already the medium of an almost inestimable 
amount of traffic. If sharpers and gamblers 
were to be the sufferers by the impending crash 
at Chicago, no one would feel much concerned; 
but they, unfortunately, are the people who 
encourage the delusion, in order to profit by it. 
Many a high-spirited but inexperienced young 
man, many a simple settler, will be ruined for 
the advantage of knaves. 

Others, besides lawyers and speculators by 
trade, make a fortune in such extraordinary 
times. A poor man at Chicago had a pre- 
emption right to some land, for which he paid 
in the morning one hundred and fifty dollars. 
In the afternoon, he sold it to a friend of mine 
for five thousand dollars. A poor Frenchman, 
married to a squaw, had a suit pending when I 
was there, which he was likely to gain, for the 
right of purchasing some land by the lake for 
one hundred dollars, which would immediately 
become worth one million dollars. 

There was much gayety going on at Chicago, 
as well as business. On the evening of our 
29 



jSemmigcenceg of <£arlp Cftitago 

arrival a fancy fair took place. As I was too 
fatigued to go, the ladies sent me a bouquet of 
prairie flowers. There is some allowable pride 
in the place about its society. It is a remark- 
able thing to meet such an assemblage of edu- 
cated, refined and wealthy persons as may be 
found there, living in small, inconvenient houses 
on the edge of a wild prairie. There is a 
mixture, of course. I heard of a family of 
half-breeds setting up a carriage and wearing 
fine jewelry. When the present intoxication 
of prosperity passes away, some of the inhab- 
itants will go back to the eastward; there will 
be an accession of settlers from the mechanic 
classes; good houses will have been built for 
the richer families, and the singularity of the 
place will subside. It will be like all the other 
new and thriving lake and river ports of 
America. Meantime, I am glad to have seen 
it in its strange early days. 

We dined one day with a gentleman who had 
been Indian agent among the Winnebagos for 
some years. He and his lady seem to have 
had the art of making themselves as absolutely 
Indian in their sympathies and manners as the 
welfare of the savages among whom they lived 
required. They were the only persons I met 
with who, really knowing the Indians, had any 
regard for them. The testimony was univer- 
sal to the good faith and other virtues of savage 
life of the unsophisticated Indians; but they 
were spoken of in a tone of dislike, as well as 
30 



Harriet jKartineau 



pity, by all but this family, and they certainly 
had studied their Indian neighbors very 
thoroughly. The ladies of Indian agents ought 
to be women of nerve. Our hostess had slept 
for weeks with a loaded pistol on each side of 
her pillow, and a dagger under it, when ex- 
pecting an attack from a hostile tribe. The 
foe did not, however, come nearer than within 
a few miles. Her husband's sister was in the 
massacre when the fort was abandoned, in 
1 8 12. Her father and her husband were in 
the battle, and her mother and young brothers 
and sisters sat in a boat on the lake near. Out 
of seventy whites, only seventeen escaped, 
among whom were her family. She was 
wounded in the ankle, as she sat on her horse. 
A painted Indian, in warlike costume, came 
leaping up to her, and seized her horse, as she 
supposed, to murder her. She fought him 
vigorously, and he bore it without doing her 
any injury. He spoke, but she could not 
understand him. Another frightful savage 
came up, and the two led her horse to the lake, 
and into it, in spite of her resistance, till the 
water reached their chins. She concluded 
that they meant to drown her; but they con- 
tented themselves with holding her on her horse 
till the massacre was over, when they led her 
out in safety. They were friendly Indians, 
sent by her husband to guard her. She could 
not but admire their patience when she found 
how she had been treating her protectors. 

3i 



Mtmim$tmtt$ of <£arlp Chicago 

We had the fearful pleasure of seeing various 
savage dances performed by the Indian agent 
and his brother, with the accompaniments of 
complete costume, barbaric music, and whoop- 
ing. The most intelligible to us was the Dis- 
covery Dance, a highly descriptive pantomime. 
We saw the Indian go out armed for war. We 
saw him reconnoitre, make signs to his comrades, 
sleep, warm himself, load his rifle, sharpen his 
scalping-knife, steal through the grass within a 
rifle-shot of his foes, fire, scalp one of them, 
and dance, whooping and triumphing. There 
was a dreadful truth about the whole, and it 
made our blood run cold. It realized hatred 
and horror as effectually as Taglioni does love 
and grace. 

We were unexpectedly detained over the 
Sunday at Chicago; and Dr. F. was requested 
to preach. Though only two hours' notice 
was given, a respectable congregation was 
assembled in the large room of the Lake House, 
a new hotel then building. Our seats were a 
few chairs and benches, and planks laid on 
trestles. The preacher stood behind a rough 
pine table, on which a large Bible was placed. 
I was never present at a more interesting serv- 
ice, and I know that there were others who 
felt with me. 

From Chicago, we made an excursion into 

the prairies. Our young lawyer friend threw 

behind him the five hundred dollars per day 

which he was making, and went with us. I 

32 



Harriet piaztmtau 



thought him wise for there is that to be had 
in the wilderness which money cannot buy. 
We drove out of town at ten o'clock in the 
morning, too late by two hours; but it was im- 
possible to overcome the introductions to 
strangers, and the bustle of our preparations, 
any sooner. Our party consisted of seven, 
besides the driver. Our vehicle was a wagon 
with four horses. 

We had first to cross the prairie, nine miles 
wide, on the lake edge of which Chicago stands. 
This prairie is not usually wet so early in the 
year; but at this time the water stood almost 
up to the nave of the wheels, and we crossed 
it at a walking pace. I saw here, for the first 
time in the United States, the American prim- 
rose. It grew in profusion over the whole 
prairie, as far as I could see — not so large and 
fine as in English greenhouses, but graceful 
and pretty. I now found the truth of what I 
had read about the difficulty of distinguishing 
distances on a prairie. The feeling is quite 
bewildering. A man walking near looks like 
a Goliath a mile off. I mistook a covered 
wagon without horses, at a distance of fifty 
yards, for a white house near the horizon; and 
so on. We were not sorry to reach the belt 
of trees which bounded the swamp we had 
passed. At a house here, where we stopped 
to water the horses and eat doughnuts, we saw 
a crowd of emigrants, which showed that we 
had not yet reached the bounds of civilization. 

33 



Mtmmi$tmtt$ of €arip Chicago 

A little further on we came to the River Aux 
Plaines, spelled on a sign board "Oplain." 
The ferry here is a monopoly, and the public 
suffers accordingly. There is only one small 
flatboat for the service of the concourse of 
people now pouring into the prairies. Though 
we happened to arrive nearly first of the crowd 
of to-day, we were detained on the bank above 
an hour; and then our horses went over at two 
crossings, and the wagon and ourselves at the 
third. It was a pretty scene, if we had not been 
in a hurry; the country wagons and teams in 
the wood by the side of the quiet, clear river, 
and the oxen swimming over, yoked, with only 
their patient faces visible above the surface. 
After crossing, we proceeded briskly till we 
reached a single house, where, or nowhere, we 
were to dine. The kind hostess bestirred 
herself to provide us a good dinner of tea, 
bread, ham, potatoes, and strawberries, of 
which a whole pailful, ripe and sweet, had been 
gathered by the children in the grass round the 
house, within one hour. While dinner was 
preparing, we amused ourselves with looking 
over an excellent small collection of books be- 
longing to Miss Cynthia, the daughter of the 
hostess. 

I never saw insulation (not desolation) to 
compare with the situation of a settler on a 
wide prairie. A single house in the middle of 
Salisbury Plain would be desolate. A single 
house on a prairie has clumps of trees near it, 
34 



Harriet ^tartmeau 



rich fields about it and flowers, strawberries, 
and running water at hand. But when I saw 
a settler's child tripping out of home bounds, 
I had a feeling that it would never get back 
again. It looked like putting out into Lake 
Michigan in a canoe. The soil round the 
dwellings is very rich. It makes no dust, it is 
so entirely vegetable. It requires merely to be 
once turned over to produce largely; and at 
present it appears to be inexhaustible. As 
we proceeded, the scenery became more and 
more like what all travelers compare it to — a 
boundless English park. The grass was wilder, 
the occasional footpath not so trim, and the 
single trees less majestic; but no park ever 
displayed anything equal to the grouping of 
the trees within the windings of the blue, 
brimming River Aux Plaines. 

We had met with so many delays that we 
felt doubts about reaching the place where we 
had intended to spend the night. At sunset, 
we found ourselves still nine miles from Joliet,* 
but we were told the road was good, except a 
small "slew" or two; and there was half a 
moon shining behind a thin veil of clouds, so 
we pushed on. We seemed latterly to be 
traveling on a terrace overlooking a wide 

* I preserve the original name, which is that of the 
first French missionary who visited these parts. The 
place is now commonly called Juliet, and a settlement 
near has actually been named Romeo ; so that I fear 
there is little hope of a restoration of the honorable 
primitive name. 

35 



&tmmt$tmt& of €arip Chicago 

champaign, where a dark, waving line might 
indicate the winding of the river between its 
clumpy banks . Our driver descended and went 
forward, two or three times, to make sure of 
our road; and at length, we rattled down a 
steep descent and found ourselves among houses. 
This was not our resting-place, however. The 
Joliet hotel lay on the other side of the river. 
We were directed to a foot-bridge by which 
we were to pass; and a ford below for the 
wagon. We strained our eyes in vain for the 
foot-bridge; and our gentlemen peeped and 
pried for some time. All was still but the 
rippling river, and everybody asleep in the 
houses that were scattered about. We ladies 
were presently summoned to put on our water- 
proof shoes, and alight. A man showed him- 
self who had risen from his bed to help us in 
our need. The foot-bridge consisted, for some 
way, of two planks, with a handrail on one side; 
but, when we were about a third of the way 
over, one half of the planks, and the handrail 
had disappeared. We actually had to cross the 
rushing, deep river on a line of single planks; 
by dim moonlight, at past eleven o'clock at 
night. The great anxiety was about Charley, 
but between his father and the guide, he man- 
aged very well. This guide would accept 
nothing but thanks. He "did not calculate to 
take any pay." Then we waited some time 
for the wagon to come up from the ford. 
I suspected it had passed the spot where we 
3 6 



Harriet ^tattineau 



stood and had proceeded to the village, where 
we saw a twinkling light, now disappearing 
and now reappearing. It was so, and the 
driver came back to look for us, and tell us 
that the light we saw was a signal from the 
hotel-keeper, whom we found standing on his 
door-step, and sheltering his candle with his 
hand. We sat down and drank milk in the bar, 
while he went to consult with his wife what 
was to be done with us, as every bed in the 
house was occupied. We, meanwhile, agreed 
that the time was now come for us to enjoy 
an adventure which we had often anticipated — 
sleeping in a barn. We had all declared our- 
selves anxious to sleep in a barn, if we could 
meet with one that was air-tight and well 
supplied with hay. Such a barn was actually 
on these premises. We were prevented, how- 
ever, from all practicing the freak by the 
prompt hospitality of our hostess. Before we 
knew what she was about, she had risen and 
dressed herself, put clean sheets on her own 
bed, and made up two others on the floor of 
the same room; so that the ladies and Charley 
were luxuriously accommodated. Two sleepy 
personages crawled downstairs to offer their 
beds to our gentlemen. Mr. L. and our Chicago 
friend, however, persisted in sleeping in the 
barn. Next morning, we all gave a very grati- 
fying report of our lodgings. When we made 
our acknowledgments to our hostess, she said 
she thought that people who could go to bed 

17 



fatmimgtmttg of <£arlp Chicago 

quietly every night ought to be ready to give 
up to tired travelers. Whenever she travels, I 
hope she will be treated as she treated us. She 
let us have breakfast as early as half-past five 
the next morning, and gave Charley a bun at 
parting, lest he should be too hungry before 
we could dine. 

The great object of our expedition, Mount 
Joliet, was two miles distant from this place. 
We had to visit it and perform the journey 
back to Chicago, forty miles, before night. 
The mount is only sixty feet high; yet it com- 
mands a view which I shall not attempt to 
describe, either in its vastness or its soft beauty. 
The very spirit of tranquillity resides in this 
paradisy scene. The next painter who would 
worthily illustrate Milton's Morning Hymn 
should come and paint what he sees from Mount 
Joliet, on a dewy summer's morning, when a 
few light clouds are gently sailing in the sky, 
and their shadows traversing the prairie. I 
thought I had never seen green levels till now, 
and only among mountains had I before known 
the beauty of wandering showers. Mount Joliet 
has the appearance of being an artificial mound, 
its sides are so uniformly steep and its form 
so regular. Its declivity was bristling with 
flowers, among which were conspicuous the 
scarlet lily, the white convolvulus, and a tall, 
red flower of the scabia form. We disturbed 
a night-hawk, sitting on her eggs, on the 
ground. She wheeled round and round over 
38 



Harriet |Startineau 



our heads, and I hope returned to her eggs 
before they were cold. 

Not far from the mount was a log house, 
where the rest of the party went in to dry their 
feet, after having stood long in the wet grass. 
I remained outside, watching the light showers, 
shifting in the partial sunlight from clump to 
level, and from reach to reach of the brimming 
and winding river. The nine miles of prairie 
which we had traversed in dim moonlight last 
night were now exquisitely beautiful, as the sun 
shone fitfully upon them. 

We saw a prairie wolf, very like a yellow 
dog, trotting across our path this afternoon. 
Our hostess of the preceding day, expecting 
us, had an excellent dinner ready for us. We 
were detained a shorter time at the ferry, and 
reached the belt of trees at the edge of Nine- 
mile Prairie before sunset. Here, in common 
prudence, we ought to have stopped till the 
next day, even if no other accommodation could 
be afforded us than a roof over our heads. 
We deserved an ague for crossing the swamp 
after dark, in an open wagon, at a foot pace. 
Nobody was aware of this in time, and we set 
forward, the feet of our weary horses plashing 
in water at every step of the nine miles. There 
was no road, and we had to trust to the instinct 
of driver and horses to keep us in the right 
direction. I rather think the driver attempted 
to amuse himself by exciting our fears. He 
hinted more than once at the difficulty of find- 

39 



$itmim$tmtt$ of <£arfp Chicago 

ing the way; at the improbability that we should 
reach Chicago before midnight; and at the 
danger of our wandering about the marsh all 
night, and finding ourselves at the opposite 
edge of the prairie in the morning. Charley 
was bruised and tired. All the rest were 
hungry and cold. It was very dreary. The 
driver bade us look to our right hand. A 
black bear was trotting alongside of us, at a 
little distance. After keeping up his trot for 
some time, he turned off from our track. The 
sight of him made up for all — even if ague 
should follow, which I verily believed it would. 
But we escaped all illness. It is remarkable 
that I never saw ague but once. The single 
case that I met with was in autumn, at the 
Falls of Niagara. 

I had promised Dr. F. a long story about 
English politics, when a convenient opportunity 
should occur. I thought the present an admir- 
able one; for nobody seemed to have anything 
to say, and it was highly desirable that some- 
thing should be said. I made my story long 
enough to beguile four miles; by which time 
some were too tired, and others too much 
disheartened, for more conversation. Some- 
thing white was soon after visible. Our driver 
gave out that it was a house, half a mile from 
Chicago. But no : it was an emigrant encamp- 
ment on a morsel of raised, dry ground; and 
again we were uncertain whether we were in 
the right road. Presently, however, the Chicago 
40 



Harriet ^tartineau 



beacon was visible, shining a welcome to us 
through the dim, misty air. The horses seemed 
to see it, for they quickened their pace; and 
before half -past ten we were on the bridge. 

The family at my temporary home were 
gone up to their chambers; but the woodfire 
was soon replenished, tea made, and the con- 
versation growing lively. My companions were 
received as readily at their several resting 
places. When we next met, we found ourselves 
all disposed to place warm hospitality very 
high on the list of virtues. 



41 



[A Lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture 
Society, May 7, 1876.] 



ONE year ago, I gave a lecture at this 
place, as I then stated to you, "with a 
view of exciting among our people a 
spirit of historical research which would result 
in recovering lost newspapers and documents, 
and placing upon record the experiences of 
our early settlers." I had no ambition to 
figure as a lecturer, or as a historian. I waited 
until the regular lecture course was finished. 
The proceeds were given with pleasure to the 
Committee for the employment of men more 
at home in the lecture field, as the proceeds of 
this lecture will be, — such men as pass six 
months in preparing one, two, or three lec- 
tures, and pass the next six months in delivering 
them. As this is their sole means of living, it 
is right that they should be well paid for them; 
and it is one of the noble objects of this Asso- 
ciation to furnish you, at an hour when you 
have no worldly pursuits nor religious enter- 
tainments, for ten cents, what other people on 
a weekday pay from fifty cents to a dollar for. 
I can think of no other object that would 
have brought me before you with a written 
lecture. I felt that the duty peculiarly devolved 
43 



JSemtnigcenceg of <£arip Chicago 

upon me, and I performed it with pleasure. 
There are scarcely half a dozen persons, habit- 
uated to public speaking, who were here before 
the city was incorporated. I was sole conduc- 
tor of a public press for twenty-five years 
lacking a few months. It seemed proper that 
I should lead off in this important matter. 

The Chicago Democrat was commenced on 
the 26th of November, 1833, by the late John 
Calhoun, whose widow now resides in this 
city. Augustine D. Taylor, now living in this 
city, saw the press landed; and Walter Kim- 
ball, now living in this city, was a visitor in 
the office, and saw the first number printed. 
That paper fell into my hands in November, 
1836, and contained not only a history of 
current events, but also a vast amount of infor- 
mation touching the early history of the entire 
Northwest. It is a sad reflection that the 
same fire which swept away my files, also 
swept away those of everyone else, and all our 
public records. But there are copies of The 
Chicago Democrat scattered all over the North- 
west, as well as of other papers and documents 
that will be of service in restoring our lost 
history. No person should destroy any papers 
or documents of a date prior to the fire. If 
there is no one who wants them, let them be 
sent to me, and I will take care of them until 
our Chicago Historical Society becomes reor- 
ganized. Our old settlers are fast passing 
away. Some of the few remaining have very 

44 



^ofm fBenttoortf) 



retentive memories. Let them not be dis- 
couraged because they do not remember dates. 
It is events that we want; and by comparing 
them with other events, the dates of which we 
know, we can in time obtain the exact dates 
of all of them. While so many of our old 
settlers have passed away, there yet may be 
remaining among their effects old papers whose 
value their legal representatives do not appre- 
ciate. Many old packages have been given 
to me, with the remark that they did not see 
of what use they could be to me. One widow 
sent me some pieces of newspapers, which the 
mice had kindly spared, with the remark that 
she was ashamed to be sending such old trash 
to any one; but from them facts enough were 
gathered to save another widow from being 
swindled out of her homestead. When I lec- 
tured before, it was a matter of dispute what 
was the name of the first steamboat that ever 
came to Chicago, and who was the person in 
command. She came to bring the troops for 
the Black Hawk War in 1832, and brought 
the cholera with them. All that was known 
for a certainty was the place where they dug 
the pit into which they most unceremoniously 
plunged the dead bodies. That was remem- 
bered because it was the site of the old American 
Temperance House, northwest corner of Lake 
Street and Wabash Avenue; and many old 
settlers remembered that from the fact that 
they always passed by the Temperance House 
45 



Mtmxni$tmtt$ of €atlp Chicago 

on the other side, and so could read the sign. 
The river and lake water, which we had to 
drink in those days, was considered unhealthy. 
I made a statement as to the name of that 
boat, based upon what I considered the best 
authority. But when I had finished, a gentle- 
man came upon the stage and gave me another 
name, claiming that he helped fit out the very 
vessel at Cleveland, and I changed my manu- 
script to correspond. But some of the reporters 
published the statement as I delivered it, and 
thus two statements were before the public as 
given by me. Thus different persons, anxious 
to assist me in re-establishing the landmarks 
of history, had an opportunity, by quoting the 
one statement to provoke discussion by insist- 
ing that the other statement was true, when 
they really did not know any more about the 
matter than I did, and had perhaps consulted 
only one authority, when I had previously con- 
sulted many. But a lady, in looking over her 
old papers, found, where she least expected it, 
a Chicago Democrat dated March 14, 1861, 
containing a letter from Captain A. Walker, 
giving a history of the whole expedition, show- 
ing that both statements were correct. The 
United States Government chartered four 
steamers to bring troops and supplies to Chi- 
cago, and their names were the Superior, Henry 
Clay, William Penn, and Sheldon Thompson; 
but the Superior and Henry Clay were sent 
back when the cholera broke out on board. 
46 



Stofm t©enttoort& 



Captain Walker says, that when he arrived 
at Chicago, in July, 1832, there were but five 
dwelling-houses here, three of which were made 
of logs. There are other old newspapers yet 
to be found settling questions equally as inter- 
esting. 

All must admit, that there has been more 
said about the history of Chicago, and more 
important publications made, the past year 
than ever before. Booksellers inform me that 
they have had within the past year, a greater 
demand than in all time before for all works 
appertaining to the history of the Northwest, 
and that they have had, all the while, standing 
orders for such works as are out of print. 
And it is to encourage a still further research 
that I address you today. And, if the result 
of this year's researches is not satisfactory, I 
shall feel myself in duty bound to address you 
again in a year from this time. Many aged 
settlers have thanked me for bringing them 
into a higher appreciation. One octogenarian 
lady informs me that, for the past fifteen years, 
when any young company came to the house, 
she was expected to leave the room. After 
my lecture, she said she saw a gentleman 
approaching the house, and she left the room 
as usual. But soon her granddaughter came 
out and said, "It is you he wants.' ' And 
this was the first gentleman caller she had had 
for fifteen years. When she entered the room, 
and he told her he wanted to inquire about 
47 



JSeminigcenceg of <£arip Chicago 

early Chicago, she felt as if her youth had 
come again, and she told the others that it 
was their time to leave the room. She said, 
"He has been to see me six times, and has 
printed nearly all I said, and there is not another 
member of our large family who has ever said 
a word that was thought of sufficient impor- 
tance to be printed; and now I am thinking 
over what I know about early Chicago, and 
letting the newspapers have it. ' ' She observed 
with great force that the young folks were 
constantly asking her how she used to get 
along amid early privations, and she insisted 
that, if I ever lectured again, I should assert 
that the early settlers of Chicago were the 
happiest people in the world, as I believe they 
were. But a strict regard for the real histor- 
ical purposes of this lecture will permit me to 
allude only incidentally to our early sources of 
entertainment. 

We are apt to speak of Chicago as a new 
city. But it is not so, compared with the 
great mass of other cities in the United States. 
Take out Detroit, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and 
New Orleans, and what is there older, in the 
date of its incorporation, in the West, extend- 
ing to the Pacific? But when our city was 
organized we had no Pacific possessions, save 
Oregon Territory, which we then owned in 
common with Great Britain. The future his- 
torian of America will not, however, take into 
consideration the date of our incorporation. 
48 



^olpt a©atttoortf> 



The ancient Romans were in the habit of dat- 
ing events from the foundation of their city. 
But Urbs condita or Chicago condita will never 
be a reckoning point in our city's history. 
Even in this assembly, there are not as many 
who know in what year our city was incorpo- 
rated as in one of our public schools there are 
children who can spell Melchisedec, notwith- 
standing modern politicians have kicked from 
the public schools the Book that contained the 
eighth commandment. 

From Washington's inauguration, in 1789, 
to Chicago's first mayor's inauguration, in 
1837, we have but forty-eight years, a period 
of time that the future historian of America 
when speaking of Chicago, will not notice. 
But a resident of Chicago was not elected to 
Congress until 1 843, and yet he became asso- 
ciated not only with men prominent under 
every administration of the United States Gov- 
ernment, and many of them born before the 
inauguration of Washington, but with some 
born even before the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, and two, at least, before the tea was 
thrown overboard in Boston Harbor. John 
Quincy Adams was born in 1767, and he was 
accustomed to tell us that among his earliest 
recollections was that of hearing the report of 
the guns at the battle of Bunker Hill. Ben- 
jamin Tappan, Senator from Ohio, was born 
in 1773. Then there was Henry Clay, Secre- 
tary of State while John Quincy Adams was 

49 



Mtmmx$tmtt$ of €arip Chicago 

President, United States Senator as early as 
1806, Speaker of the House in 181 1, born in 
1777, nine months after the Declaration of 
Independence, and one who could collect a 
larger crowd and disperse it quicker and in 
better humor than any other man who ever 
lived in America. I shall never forget my last 
interview with Henry Clay, and its description 
is appropriate to the history of Chicago. Our 
harbor was suffering for appropriations. Pres- 
ident Polk had vetoed them all. A change of 
dynasties had been effected. Millard Fillmore 
was the acting President and he was a warm 
friend of our harbor. It was in the spring of 
1 85 1 . The Harbor bill had passed the House, 
and was sent to the Senate at a late day, and 
the controlling spirits had managed to keep it 
back until a still later day. The Southern 
Senators, under the lead of Jefferson Davis, 
spoke against time, declaring the bill uncon- 
stitutional. Clay did all that man could do 
for us, but in vain. Our bill was talked to 
death. Clay came on with us to New York 
City, to take a steamer for New Orleans. As 
the vessel was about to sail, we went on board 
to take our leave of him, and we all expressed 
a hope that the next time he returned home 
he would go around by the Lakes. He replied, 
"I never go where the Constitution does not 
go. Hence I must travel by salt water. Make 
your lakes constitutional. Keep up the war 
until your lake harbors get their deserved 
50 



^ofm f©mttoortf> 



appropriations, and then I will come out and 
see you. " We finally got the Constitution 
out here, but not until after Henry Clay had 
paid the debt of nature. 

Then there was John C. Calhoun, Vice-Pres- 
ident while John Quincy Adams was President 
in 1825; a member of Congress in 181 1 ; Sec- 
retary of War when the reconstruction of our 
fort was completed in 18 17; born in 1782, the 
year before Great Britain acknowledged our 
independence. He said his name came once 
very nearly being associated with Chicago, as 
the new fort had been completed while he was 
Secretary of War, and it was suggested that it 
be called Fort Calhoun. But he did not think it 
right to change the old name which had been 
given in honor of General Henry Dearborn, who 
was Secretary of War when the first fort was 
built, in 1804. Official documents tell us that 
in 1803, Captain John Whistler, then a lieuten- 
ant at Detroit, was ordered here to build the 
fort, that his troops came by land, and that he, 
with his family and his supplies, came round by 
the lakes in the United States schooner Tracy, 
with Dorr for master. This probably was the 
first sail-vessel that ever came to Chicago. I 
can think of no business that could have brought 
one here before. This Captain John Whistler 
was father of Colonel William Whistler, who 
died in 1863, and was so favorably known by 
our early settlers, and who was father-in-law of 
the late Robert A. Kinzie, of this city. 

5i 



fteminigtenceg of <£arlp Chicago 

Besides, there was Judge William Wilkins, 
of Pennsylvania, born in 1 779; Daniel Webster, 
of Massachusetts, born in 1782; John J. 
Crittenden, of Kentucky, born in 1786; and 
Judge Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire, 
born in 1 789. 

Then there were three men whose names 
are identified with the history of the West. 
There was Lewis Cass, born in 1782, appointed, 
in 18 13, governor of the Northwestern Terri- 
tory, then embracing Michigan, Wisconsin, 
Iowa, Minnesota and all west. And William 
Woodbridge, born in 1780, appointed in 1 8 14, 
secretary of the same Territory. These gen- 
tlemen were walking histories of the North- 
west. Then there was Thomas H. Benton, 
born in 1782, Senator when Missouri was 
admitted in 182 1, who made his first trips to 
Washington on horseback. Add his knowl- 
edge to that of Messrs. Woodbridge and Cass, 
and we have a complete history of the entire 
West. Many now before me will remember 
the patriotic lecture he delivered here in the 
spring of 1857, upon the approaching crisis to 
this country, about a year before his death, 
probably the last lecture of his life. Nor 
should I fail to mention General Henry Dodge, 
the Anthony Wayne of his period, born also in 
1782, one of the first Senators from Wisconsin. 

A single member of Congress, and the first 
one elected from Chicago, was associated in 
Congress with two members who served in 
52 



^ofm t©enttoortf> 



President Monroe's Cabinet, one in President 
J. Q. Adams', three in President Jackson's, 
one in President Van Buren's, five in President 
Harrison's, four in President Tyler's, four in 
President Polk's, four in President Taylor's, 
seven in President Fillmore's, four in President 
Pierce's, five in President Buchanan's, and 
six in President Lincoln's; embracing a period 
of American official history from 1817; and 
some of these men were born before the tea 
was thrown overboard in Boston Harbor. 

For some years after Chicago elected her 
first member of Congress, the widow of Presi- 
dent Madison gave receptions at Washington, 
and on the first of January her guests were 
shown apartments where were suspended 
dresses which she had worn upon all great 
occasions, including the receptions of Presi- 
dents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and her 
husband. James Madison was not only a mem- 
ber of the Continental Congress, but also a 
member of the first Congress under the Con- 
stitution, and so continued during the terms 
of Washington's Presidency; and was Secretary 
of State under Mr. Jefferson's Administration. 
So this lady had ample opportunity to know 
the customs of every preceding period of our 
governmental history. Now, if her heirs 
bring out these dresses for the Centennial (she 
had no children), the public will be astonished 
at their remarkably small number, she not hav- 
ing had, in over a quarter of a century, what 

53 



JSemimgcenteg of oEarip Chicago 

the wife of the average office-holder of these 
days will have in a single year. 

Then there was the widow of General 
Alexander Hamilton, the confidant of General 
Washington in the Revolution, and his Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, who was killed in a duel by 
Aaron Burr. She was born in 1757, and died 
at Washington in 1 854. She was soliciting 
Congress to aid her in publishing her husband's 
works. She could tell all about her father, 
General Philip Schuyler, of the American Revo- 
lution; the personal appearance of General 
Washington and his lady; and of almost all 
other public persons of the Revolutionary 
period. In fact, when you sent your first 
member of Congress to Washington, all society 
was redolent with scenes of the Revolutionary 
period; and here in our midst were several 
Revolutionary soldiers; and one, Father David 
Kenison, who claimed to have been one of 
the party who threw the tea overboard in 
Boston Harbor. 

You will excuse me for digressing from the 
direct purpose of this lecture if I here state 
to you, that since I commenced writing it, I 
have received a letter from an old colleague 
in Congress, who was born the same year 
Great Britain acknowledged our independence 
— 1783 — as it will probably be the last oppor- 
tunity that many of you will ever have of 
hearing a letter read from a man now living 
who is older than our government; I allude to 

54 



^ofjn S5enttoortf> 



the Hon. Artemas Hale, of Bridgewater, Massa- 
chusetts. He is the oldest ex-member of 
Congress now living, in his 93d year. Do you 
want to hear what the veteran says ? 

My health, considering my age, is quite good. 
But my time for taking any active part in public 
matters is past. Still, however, I feel a deep inter- 
est in the welfare and prosperity of our beloved 
country, and am pained to hear of the corruption and 
frauds of so many of our public men. It appears to 
me that it is of the highest importance that our circu- 
lating medium should have a fixed and permanent 
value, which it cannot have but by a specie basis. I 
should be very much pleased to receive a letter from 
you, with your views of public matters. 

I answered his letter in one word, ' ' Amen ! ' ' 
Thus you will see that our history laps so 
closely upon the Revolutionary period that 
there is no precise point at which we can say that 
Chicago began, unless it be in 1832, when the 
marching of the troops of General Scott to Rock 
Island, on the Mississippi, called attention to the 
fertility of the soil and the beautiful locations 
west of us. We often hear of different men 
who have done much for Chicago, by their 
writings, their speeches, or their enterprise. 
But I have never heard of a man who has done 
more for Chicago than Chicago has done for 
him. God made Lake Michigan and the coun- 
try to the west of it ; and, when we come to 
estimate who have done the most for Chicago, 
the glory belongs first to the enterprising 
farmers who raised a surplus of produce and 

55 



fteminigcenceg of <£arlp Chicago 

sent it here for shipment ; and second, to the 
hardy sailors who braved the storms of our 
harborless lakes to carry it to market. All 
other classes were the incidents, and not the 
necessities, of our embryo city. Chicago is 
but the index of the prosperity of our agricul- 
tural classes. And to this day we hear Chicago 
mercantile failures attributed to the inability 
of farmers to get their produce to market, 
when the roads are in a bad condition. If we 
pass by the impetus given to the agricultural 
development of the country west of Chicago 
by the Black Hawk War of 1832, we must 
admit that we are passing into the bi-centen- 
nial period. What did Chicago know of the 
Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary 
War, the Peace of 1783, or the inauguration 
of Washington, until years afterwards ? It is 
probable that Captain Whistler, when he came 
here to build the fort of 1804, brought to 
Chicago the first information on these subjects, 
and probably had to employ an interpreter to 
explain it. It was probably his chaplain that 
made the first prayer for the President of the 
United States and all in authority; and his 
vessel that first floated the Stars and Stripes 
on Lake Michigan. But there were prayers 
here two hundred years ago, and a flag that did 
not denote our national independence, but 
French territorial aggrandizement. 

I have used my best efforts to find the 
earliest recognition of Chicago by any official"' 
56 



gw>n f©mttoortf> 



authority. Charlevoix and other French writ- 
ers make mention of the place, but I cannot 
find that the French Government in any way 
recognized it. After the Canadas were ceded 
to Great Britain, the whole Illinois country 
was placed under the local administration of 
Canada by a bill which passed the British 
Parliament in 1766, known as the "Quebec 
Bill;" but there is nothing to prove that the 
Canadian Government took any official notice 
of this place. It may be interesting to know 
what was religious liberty in those days. At 
the period of the change of government from 
the French, under the treaty of Paris, in 1763, 
Thomas Gage was commander-in-chief of the 
British king's troops in North America; and 
in 1764 he issued a proclamation authorizing 
the Roman Catholics of Illinois to exercise 
the worship of their religion in the same man- 
ner as they did in Canada, and to go wherever 
they pleased, even to New Orleans. 

In October, 1778, the House of Burgesses 
of Virginia created the County of Illinois, 
appointed John Todd, of Kentucky, civil 
commander, and authorized all the civil offi- 
cers to which the inhabitants had been accus- 
tomed, to be chosen by a majority of the 
citizens of their respective districts. From this 
we should infer that there were then settle- 
ments somewhere in the state. But I can 
find nothing of Chicago while we belonged to 
Virginia. The late Wm. H. Brown, of this city, 
57 



Uemmigtenceg of <£arlp Chicago 

in a lecture before our Historical Society, in 
1865, said: "The French inhabitants of Kas- 
kaskia, in 1 8 18, the year in which I made my 
residence there, claimed that that village was 
founded in 1 707 . There were evidences at that 
time (the remains of former edifices, among 
them the Jesuit College) that their chronology 
was substantially correct.' ' 

In 1788, General Arthur St. Clair became 
governor of the entire Northwestern Territory, 
and was the first man to fill that position. The 
seat of government for Chicago people was 
then at Marietta, Ohio. In 1 790 he came to 
Kaskaskia (some writers say Cahokia) and 
organized what is now the entire State of 
Illinois into a county, which he named for 
himself. Besides this there were but two 
counties in the whole Northwestern Territory — 
the County of Knox, embracing Indiana, and 
the County of Hamilton, embracing Ohio. 
But there is nothing to show that Chicago at 
that time was known to the civil authorities. 
Besides consulting all the early writers upon the 
subject, I have corresponded with all the men 
in the country who I thought would know any- 
thing concerning it. And I cannot find anyone 
who has any authority for stating that there 
was any official recognition of Chicago until 
General Wayne's treaty, made at Greenville 
in 1795, in which he acquired title from the 
Indians to "a tract of land, six miles square, 
at the mouth of the Chicago River, where a 
58 



Stofm t©mttoortf> 



fort formerly stood." Greenville is in the south- 
western part of Ohio, in Dark County, upon 
the Indiana state line. There is nothing to 
show that, at that time, General Wayne came 
any farther west, not even as far as Fort Wayne, 
although he appears to have had the same 
knowledge of the importance of the position 
of Fort Wayne as he did of that of Chicago. 
Why the fort at this place, referred to, was built 
here, and who built it, I have not been able to 
ascertain. As the French and Indians were 
always allies, there is no reason why the French 
should have built such a fort. It may be that it 
was built by one of the tribes of Indians to de- 
fend the place from some other tribe. But 
offsetting tradition against General Wayne's 
official recognition of a fort here, it may be that 
there was a mere trading and storehouse, sur- 
rounded by pickets . The prevailing impression 
is that such was the character of all those places 
called forts prior to the abdication of the French 
authority. Colonel Gurdon S. Hubbard, our 
oldest living settler, who was here in 1 8 1 8, favors 
this idea, and has reminded me of an almost for- 
gotten, but at one time extensively received, 
tradition, that this old fort, or palisaded trading- 
post, was on the West Side, upon the North 
Branch, near where Indiana Street now crosses 
it; and it was erected, or at least was at one 
time occupied, by a Frenchman named Garie, 
and hence the tradition that our North Branch 
river was once called "Garie's River.' ' 
59 



Mtmim$tmtt& of <£arip Chicago 

There was a powerful chief of the Illinois 
named Chicagou, who went to France in the 
year 1725. The Hon. Sidney Breese, who 
settled at Kaskaskia in 18 18, who was in the 
United States Senate six years during my 
service in Congress, and who still honors our 
Supreme Court, is the best informed man in 
Illinois history now living. He writes me: 

I know of no authorized recognition of Chicago 
as a place on this globe, anterior to Wayne's treaty. 
I have a copy of a map, which I made from one in 
the Congressional Library, which I found among the 
papers of President Jefferson, made in 1685 ; in which 
is a place on the lake shore, about where your city 
is, marked "Chicagou;" and Father Louis Vivier, 
who was a priest at Kaskaskia in 1752, in a letter to 
his Superior, says: "Chikagou was a celebrated 
Indian chief, who went to Paris, and the Duchess of 
Orleans at Versailles, gave him a splendid snuff-box, 
which he was proud to exhibit, on his return, to his 
brother redskins." 

Some have contended that our city was 
named from him. But Charlevoix, in his 
History of New France, gives us that name 
as early as 1 67 1, in which year, he says, a 
French voyageur, named Nicholas Perrot, 
went to Chicago, at the lower end of Lake 
Michigan, where the Miamis then were. This 
was before Father James Marquette came here. 

The treaty of Greenville, at the time con- 
sidered of no other importance than as settling 
our difficulties with the Indians, afterwards be- 
came a matter of very serious importance in the 
settlement of our difficulties with Great Britain, 
60 



^ttfjtt t©enttocrtf> 



while the Treaty of Ghent was being negotiated 
1 8 14. When the commissioners met, the 
Americans were surprised by the British 
commissioners demanding the recognition of 
that treaty as the basis of negotiations as to 
the western boundary of the United States. 
The British at first refused to negotiate 
except upon the basis of that treaty, and 
insisted upon the entire sovereignty and inde- 
pendence of the Indian Confederacy. They 
claimed the Indians as their allies, and consid- 
ered themselves bound to protect them in their 
treaty. It will be remembered that the Indians 
had, for a long time, received annuities from 
the French Government, and that these annu- 
ities were continued by Great Britain after the 
treaty of cession in 1763; and that, after our 
independence was acknowledged by Great 
Britain, the Indians annually sent delegations 
to Canada to receive these annuities. During 
the pendency of these negotiations it was ascer- 
tained that there had been an alliance, offensive 
and defensive, between the celebrated Chief 
Tecumseh and the British authorities. After 
discussing the matter and finding the Americans 
peremptorily refusing to acknowledge the sov- 
ereignty of the Indians, the British commis- 
sioners proposed that the United States and 
Great Britain should exercise a joint protector- 
ate over the Indians, and consider all the 
territory not acknowledged to belong to the 
United States by the treaty of Greenville as 
61 



JSemmigcettceg of <£arip Chicago 

embraced within that protectorate . This would 
have left the six miles square at the mouth of the 
Chicago River in a permanently Indian country. 
The West would have been situated similarly 
to Oregon, which was so long held under the 
joint occupation of Great Britain and the United 
States; and the final result of the joint occupa- 
tion would have been the same as in Oregon, 
a division of the territory; a part of it, perhaps 
including Chicago, being attached, in the end, 
to Canadian provinces. The British commis- 
sioners were so pertinacious on this subject 
that it was thought at one time that negotiations 
would have to be given up. And when the 
British commissioners finally yielded, the British 
Government received the bitter curses of the 
Indians. 

Billy Caldwell, better known in Chicago as 
Sauganash, who lived here several years after I 
came here, and was well known to me person- 
ally, had been the intimate friend of Tecumseh, 
and declared that if Tecumseh had been living 
he would have aroused all the Indians in the 
Northwest in a general warfare upon the 
Canadian settlements, in retaliation for what 
he considered the treachery at Ghent. Cald- 
well, to the day of his death, insisted that 
Tecumseh, not long before he was killed, 
predicted that the British in time would 
abandon them, and seriously meditated, dur- 
ing the War of 1 8 12, upon going over to the 
Americans with all his forces. Caldwell was 
62 



gtofjn iteenttoortl) 



the son of an Irish colonel in the British army, 
stationed upon the Detroit frontier, whose 
name he bore. His mother was Tecumseh's 
own sister. He ultimately went to his tribe 
at the Pottawatomie Reservation in Shawnee 
County, Kansas, and died there. 

When the Illinois territory was a part of 
Indiana, our seat of government was at Vin- 
cennes. When it was set off from Indiana, in 
1809, the whole territory was organized into 
two counties, St. Clair and Randolph. Judge 
Breese, whose home was in Kaskaskia in 18 18, 
informs me that his home was never in the 
same county with Chicago, being in the south- 
ern County of Randolph. 

From St. Clair County, what is now Cook 
County was set off in the new County of 
Madison; thence in the new County of Craw- 
ford; in 18 19, in the new County of Clark; 
and so little was then known of the northern 
country, that the act creating Clark County 
extended it to the Canada line. In 182 1, we 
were set off in the new County of Pike; in 
1823, in the new County of Fulton; and in 
1825, in the new County of Peoria. I have 
not only caused the county records of these 
counties to be examined, but have also corre- 
sponded with their earliest settlers, and I can 
find no official recognition of Chicago until we 
reach Fulton County. The clerk of that county 
writes me, that the earliest mention of Chicago 
in the records is the order of an election at the 

63 



Mtmmigttnttg of <£arip Chicago 

term of the Fulton County Commissioners' 
Court, September 2, 1823, to choose one 
major and company officers, polls at Chicago 
to be opened at the house of John Kinzie. 
The returns of this election cannot be found, 
if they were ever made. As the county was 
organized in 1823, this, of course, was the 
first election under the organization of the 
county. The same court ordered, April 27, 
1824, that the sheriff, Abner Eads, be released 
from paying the money tax collected at Chicago 
by Ransom. In those days the sheriffs were 
ex-officio collectors of taxes. It seems that 
they had defaulters in those days, as well as 
now. It would be a gratifying historical fact if 
we could know how much this man Ransom 
collected, as showing the financial resources of 
our population at that time, when all the real 
estate belonged to the general government. 
The numerous followers of this man Ransom 
have shown their ingratitude to the founder of 
their sect by their failure to erect any monument 
to his memory, or to name after him a street, a 
schoolhouse, or a fire-engine house. These 
Ransomites are getting to be a numerous body of 
men, and their motto is, "Keep what you col- 
lect . ' ' One election and one steal are all that the 
records of Fulton County show for Chicago. 
The clerk of Peoria County writes me, that 
his earliest records commence March 8, 1825. 
From these records I learn that John Kinzie 
was commissioned justice of the peace July 28, 
64 



3Wm J©enttoortf> 



1825. He was the first justice of the peace 
resident at Chicago. Alexander Wolcott, his 
son-in-law, and John B. Beaubien, were com- 
missioned September 10 of the same year. 

I have also the assessment roll of John L. 
Bogardus, assessor of Peoria County, for the 
year 1825, dated July 25, which is as follows: 

Taxpayer's Name Valuation Tax 

1 Beaubien, John B $1000 $10.00 

2 Clybourne, Jonas 625 6.25 

3 Clark, John K 250 2.50 

4 Crafts, John .5000 50.00 

5 Clermont, Jeremy 100 1.00 

6 Coutra, Louis 50 .50 

7 Kinzie, John 500 5.00 

8 Laframboise, Claude 100 1.00 

9 Laframboise, Joseph 50 .50 

10 McKee, David 100 1.00 

11 Piche, Peter 100 1.00 

12 Robinson, Alexander 200 2.00 

13 Wolcott, Alexander 572 5.72 

14 Wilemet [Ouilmette] Antoine 400 4.00 

The entire valuation, land then being not 
taxable, of all the property in Chicago was 
$9,047, and the rate was one per cent. But 
the property of the American Fur Company 
was assessed to John Crafts, its agent, at 
$5,000. He was a bachelor, and died the 
next year, and Mr. Kinzie was appointed in 
his place. Deducting the American Fur Com- 
pany's assessment, we have only $4,047, as 
the personal property of Chicago, in 1825, 
$40.47 as the tax, and thirteen as the number 
of taxpayers. 

65 



&tmmi$tmtt$ of <£arlp Chicago 

The clerk sent me a copy of two poll-books 
used at Chicago — one at an election held 
August 7, 1826, containing thirty-five names; 
the other at an election held August 2, 1830, 
containing thirty- two names; thus showing a 
decrease of three voters in four years. I will 
read you the names of our voters in 1826, and 
you will see that only ten of the fourteen tax- 
payers in 1825 then voted: 

1 Augustin Banny. [Bannot?] 

2 Henry Kelley^ 

3 Daniel Bourassea. 

4 Cole Weeks 

5 Antoine Ouilmette. 1 825 

6 John Baptiste Secor. 

7 Joseph Catie. 

8 Benjamin Russell. 

9 Basile Displattes. 

10 Francis Laframboise, Sr. 

11 Francis Laframboise, Jr. 

12 Joseph Laframboise. 1825 

13 Alexander Larant. 

14 Francis Laducier. 

15 Peter Chavellie. 

16 Claude Laframboise. 1825 

17 Jeremiah Clairmore [Clermont?] '25 

18 Peter Junio. 

19 John Baptiste Lafortune. 

20 John Baptiste Malast. 

21 Joseph Pothier. 

22 Alexander Robinson. 1825 

23 John K. Clark. 1825 

24 David McKee. 1825 

25 Joseph Anderson. 

26 Joseph Pepot. 

27 John Baptiste Beaubien. 1825 

28 John Kinzie. 1825 

66 



^ofm f©enttoortf> 



29 Archibald Clybourne. 

30 Billy Caldwell. 

31 Martin Vansicle. 

32 Paul Jamboe. 

33 Jonas Clybourne. 1825 

34 Edward G. Ament. 

35 Samuel Johnston. 

I will now read you the names of our voters 
in 1830, showing that only three of the four- 
teen tax payers of 1825 then voted: 

1 Stephen J. Scott. 

2 John B. Beaubien, 1825, 1826. 

3 Leon Bourassea. 

4 B. H. Laughton. 

5 Jesse Walker. 

6 Medard B. Beaubien. 

7 John Baptiste Chavellea. 

8 James Kinzie. 

9 Russell E. Heacock. 

10 James Brown. 

11 Jos. Laframboise. 1825, 1826. 

12 John L. Davis. 

13 William See. 

14 John Van Horn. 

15 John Mann. 

16 David Van Eaton. 

17 Stephen Mack. 

18 Jonathan Nash Bailey. 

19 Alexander McDale. [McDole?] 

20 John S. C. Hogan. 

21 David McKee. 1825, 1826 

22 Billy Caldwell. 1826 

23 Joseph Thibeaut. 

24 Peter Frique. 

25 Mark Beaubien. 

26 Laurant Martin. 

27 John Baptiste Secor. 1826 

28 Joseph Bauskey. 

67 



ftemim^cenceg of <£arip Chicago 

29 Michael Welch. 

30 Francis Laducier. 1826 

31 Lewis Ganday. 

32 Peresh Leclerc. 

It is a remarkable commentary upon the 
fickleness of our population, that only six of the 
men who voted in 1826 voted in 1830; and 
these six were half-breeds or government em- 
ploye's. Father John Kinzie, however, died 
between the two elections, upon the 6th of 
January, 1828, aged 65. But there were some 
not voting at the second election, such as the 
late Archibald Clybourne, his father Jonas, and 
half-brother John K. Clark, who ended their 
days with us. The half-breeds and French 
who did not vote may have been away on a 
hunting and trading expedition. The voters 
in 1826 seem to have understood their true in- 
terest, being dependents upon the fort, as 
every one of them voted the Administration 
ticket, John Quincy Adams then being Presi- 
dent. If there were ever three men in the 
United States who electrified the whole country 
with their fiery denunciations of the military 
power, they were President John Quincy 
Adams, his Vice-President, John C. Calhoun, 
and his Secretary of State, Henry Clay. 
Neither of the three ever forget General Jack- 
son! It would have seemed malicious, and yet 
quite pertinent, on the part of the Chicago mem- 
ber of Congress to have asked either of these 
gentlemen whether it was not a singular fact, 
68 



^oijn t©enttoortf> 



that while Mr. Adams was President, the people 
of Chicago unanimously voted with the fort. 
Ninian Edwards for governor, Samuel H. 
Thompson for lieutenant-governor, Daniel 
P. Cook for congressman, the Administration 
candidates, each received thirty-five votes, 
being all there were. The much-complained- 
of military power of the present day has never 
secured a greater unanimity in the colored vote 
of the South. But four years later, in 1830, 
when Andrew Jackson was President, there 
was a material change in the politics of the 
place. John Reynolds, the Jackson candidate 
for governor, received twenty-two out of the 
thirty-two votes cast. Of the six who voted at 
both elections, and who voted for the Adams 
candidate in 1826, five voted for the Jackson 
candidate in 1830; showing their consistency by 
each time voting with the Administration, or 
more properly with the fort. Billy Caldwell, the 
Sauganash, the nephew of Tecumseh, voted 
the Jackson ticket; while Joseph Laframboise, 
a noted Indian chief, stood out and voted against 
it. Perhaps General Jackson, in some of the 
early Indian wars, had caused the death of 
some of Laframboise ' relatives or friends. 
Up to 1848, we had the viva voce system of 
voting in the State of Illinois. Each man went 
up to the polls, with or without a ticket in his 
hands, and told whom he wanted to vote for, 
and the judges so recorded it. But in those 
days, the masses knew as little whom they 
69 



Mtmim$ttntt$ of <£arip Chicago 

were voting for as they do now. For the 
judges often read off the names of the candi- 
dates from the tickets and the voter would nod 
his head. There was no chance, however, for 
stuffing the ballot-box under the viva voce 
system. It may account for the falling off of 
the vote between 1826 and 1830, that some 
persons would not vote the Jackson ticket, and 
yet disliked to vote against the fort. There 
were four of the Laframboise family voting in 
1826 and only one in 1 830. The names of 
voters in 1826 indicate that full three fourths of 
them were French and half-breeds. The judges 
in 1826 were Father John Kinzie, the late 
General John B. Beaubien, and Billy Caldwell. 
The clerks were the late Archibald Clybourne 
and his half-brother John K. Clark. The elec- 
tion was held at the Agency House, in Chicago 
Precinct, Peoria County. The Agency House 
was on the North Side, and was the second 
house built in Chicago, Mr. Kinzie's being 
the first. The Indian agent was Dr. Alex- 
ander Wolcott, who died in 1 830, son-in-law 
of Mr. Kinzie. 

The election of 1830 was held in the house 
of James Kinzie, Chicago Precinct, Peoria 
County. This house was on the West Side, 
near the forks of the river. The South Side 
had no status at that time, there being nothing 
then on that side except the fort and lighthouse 
building, and the log houses of the two 
Beaubien brothers, — one residing at the lake 
70 



^oftft i©enttoortf> 



shore, and one near the forks of the river, 
with such a marsh between that, much of the 
time, their most convenient way of visiting 
each other was in boats in the river. 

The judges at the election of 1830 were 
Russell E. Heacock, the first lawyer to settle 
in Chicago, General John B. Beaubien, one of 
the judges in 1826, and James Kinzie. The 
clerks were Medard B. Beaubien, well known 
in this city, now principal agent of the Potta- 
watomie tribe of Indians at Silver Lake, 
Shawnee County, Kansas, and Jesse Walker. 
The names of voters in 1830 indicate a large 
influx of the Anglo-Saxon race; but among 
them was one Irishman, probably the first 
Irishman who ever trod the Chicago soil. The 
first thought that occurred to me was, What 
could bring an Irishman out here all alone? 
Who was to help him celebrate St. Patrick's 
Day? Who was to attend his wake? His 
name was Michael Welch. What have our 
many Irish aldermen been thinking of that 
they have never given us, in honor of their 
first settler, a Welch Avenue, a Welch Street, 
a Welch schoolhouse or a Welch fire-engine? 
The next thought that occurred to me was, 
What could he be doing out here all by him- 
self? Now, what would an Irishman naturally 
do when he found himself here all alone, hun- 
dreds of miles distant from any other Irishman? 
He was a bugler. He blew his horn. He 
was a discharged soldier, and, having faithfully 

n 



&tmim$tmtt$ of €arip Chicago 

served out his time, he stopped long enough to 
vote the straight Jackson ticket, and then joined 
Captain Jesse Brown's Rangers and marched 
on to clear the Indians out of the way of his 
coming countrymen, who were already aroused 
by his bugle's blast, as his patron St. Patrick, 
centuries before, had cleared the snakes out of 
his way in the land of his nativity. 

Captain Jesse Brown was a brother of the late 
Judge Thomas C. Brown, of our Supreme 
Court, and was authorized by President Jack- 
son to raise a company of men, who were called 
"Brown's Rangers," and was ordered to re- 
port to General Stephen W. Kearny, on the 
western frontier. 

There is a prevailing impression that Irish- 
men never go anywhere except in squads. But 
the history of the American continent will 
prove that Irishmen have ventured as far alone 
upon hazardous explorations as any other men. 
But he dislikes to stay alone. Like the honey 
bee, when he finds a good thing, he wants 
some others to come and help him enjoy it. 
My original congressional district extended 
north to the Wisconsin line, west to the Rock 
River Valley, south so as to embrace Princeton, 
LaSalle, Bloomington, Urbana, and Danville. 
I had to travel all over this district with a 
horse and buggy, and visit spare settlements. 
I often found an Irishman cultivating the soil 
alone. But when I made a second visit I 
found more Irishmen there, or else the original 
72 



^ofm i©enttoortf> 



one had gone. Governor Winthrop, of Boston, 
in his journal under date of 1642, tells us of one 
Darby Field, an Irishman, who could not rest 
contented after his landing in America until he 
had climbed to the top of the White Mountains. 
He was the first man to ascend Mount Wash- 
ington, and when asked why he went, replied, 
"Merely to take a look at the country V s 

The official dispatches of one of the battles 
of the Mexican War commended the conduct 
of Private Sullivan, of one of our Chicago 
regiments. In the battle he had advanced 
before his company, engaged in a single com- 
bat with a Mexican officer, and killed him. I 
called President Polk's attention to the report, 
and asked for Sullivan's promotion. He re- 
ferred the matter to the adjutant-general. Time 
passed along and no appointment was sent to 
the Senate. I called upon the adjutant-gen- 
eral, and he read me a letter from Sullivan's 
superior officer, commending his courage and 
general good conduct, but strongly protesting 
against his appointment as lieutenant in the 
regular army, on account of his deficiency in 
West Point education. I appealed to the Presi- 
dent, and it did not take long to satisfy him 
that good fighting in war-time would counter- 
balance all deficiencies in education, and 
Sullivan was promoted. Some time after the 
close of the war, his father called upon me, 
said he had not heard from his son for a long 
time, and wanted me to find him. Many of 

n 



JSmumgcenceg of €arip Chicago 

you will remember the father, Jeremiah Sullivan, 
at one time justice of the peace, — a tall and 
well-proportioned gentleman, with as prepos- 
sessing a general appearance as any gentleman 
who walked our streets. I wrote to Washing- 
ton, and received for answer that Sullivan 
resigned his lieutenancy at the close of the 
war. Inside of the official letter was a note 
marked l ' private and unofficial. " ' ' Tell Sulli- 
van's father to read the news from Mexico. 
I enclose some scraps from a New Orleans 
newspaper, and the Colonel Sullivan therein 
mentioned is reported to be the late Lieutenant 
Sullivan of the regular army." Some time 
afterwards, an officer of the army gave me the 
following account : After the close of the war 
with Mexico, some of the officers were tarrying 
late at dinner, when Lieutenant Sullivan entered 
and was saluted with, "Will you join us, 
Lieutenant Sullivan ?" "Colonel Sullivan, if 
you please, gentlemen, ' ' was the reply. Where- 
upon one of the officers said, "It will not sur- 
prise us at all if you are Colonel Sullivan. If 
your killing that Mexican was of so much 
account as to put you on an equality with us 
who have studied four years at West Point, 
and have seen considerable active service, a 
a little personal favoritism might carry you still 
higher, and make you a colonel. Why, 
Lieutenant Sullivan, if you should kill another 
Mexican, those politicians at Washington would 
make you commander-in-chief!" "Gentle- 
74 



^oftn t©enttoortf> 



men, ,, said Sullivan, "it is business that brings 
me here. Here is my commission as colonel in 
the Mexican revolutionary army, and now you 
know my authority. And now, here's my busi- 
ness in this paper, which I will read. ' ' He then 
read a paper authorizing and requesting him to 
employ a competent engineer upon his staff. 
The officers reminded him that they knew 
nothing of the face of the Mexican country, 
had no maps, knew not his route, and insisted 
that they could be of no service to him. ' ' You 
do not understand me, gentlemen," replied 
Sullivan; "it is not for what I am going to 
do that I want any of your assistance. I only 
want you to map it out after I have done it. 
You are always talking about your military 
school, and what you have studied, and the 
like of you will be at school hereafter, and they 
will want to study Sullivan's route to the 
capital of Mexico; and if ever I should be 
emperor, whom would I want for secretary 
of war but my own engineer ? ' ' Sullivan set 
out upon his march with no one to map out 
his route. He penetrated regions where no 
man had ever been before. He came out of 
forests where men least expected him. He 
appeared to be everywhere, and the inhabitants 
could make no calculation where he was not. 
They either all joined him, or fled before him. 
He had everything his own way, until, in his 
efforts to join the main army, he found himself 
in the fortified country. Here he missed his 
75 



ftettimigcenceg of <£arip Chicago 

engineer and his military education. He was 
wounded, taken prisoner, marched into the 
Plaza, a bullet pierced his heart, and that was 
the last of Sullivan. But it just took a Chicago 
Irish boy to teach the Emperor Maximilian how 
to die the death of a soldier some twenty years 
afterwards; and Sullivan had as much right 
in Mexico as Maximilian. 

There are 67 names upon the two voting- 
lists of 1825 and 1830. Six voted at both 
elections, leaving 61 different names, which, 
with the four on the tax-list of 1825 who did 
not vote at either election, constitute the 65 
from whom our first families are descended. 

And as there may be some pride in after 
years in tracing one's connection with our first 
families, the real Knickerbockers of Chicago, 
I have taken some pains to obtain interviews 
or hold correspondence with such of them as 
might be living, and with the descendants of 
such as are dead. Of a very large proportion 
of them I can obtain no knowledge whatever. 
I shall publish all their names, and at some 
future time shall publish what I have ascer- 
tained, or may hereafter ascertain, of their 
history and of their descendants. When it was 
known, in i860, that the Prince of Wales was 
to make Chicago a visit, one of our society 
men suggested that it was my duty, as mayor 
of the city, to select about a hundred from our 
first families and give the Prince a ball. I asked 
him to give the names of the hundred from the 
76 



5Pofm fteenttoortf) 



first families. This he said he was unwilling 
to do. I asked him then to give me the names 
of even ten of our first families, meaning, of 
course, nine besides his own. This he also 
declared himself unwilling to do. But if, at 
any future time, any one of our society men 
should wish to make a party from our first 
families, he may derive some assistance from 
this lecture. 

At this time I think there are but three of 
those voters living. One is Medard B. Beau- 
bien, son of the late General John B. Beaubien, 
of this city, the leading man among the Potta- 
watomie Indians, in Kansas. The second is 
David McKee, now living near Aurora, Illinois. 
He was born in Virginia in 1800, and went to 
Cincinnati when a young man, as a blacksmith. 
Under the treaty of Chicago, made with the 
Indians by General Cass, in 1821, the govern- 
ment was to keep a blacksmith here, who was to 
work exclusively for the Indians. Colonel Benja- 
min B. Kerchival, then Indian agent, afterwards 
a prominent citizen of Detroit, went to Cincin- 
nati and employed McKee to come here in that 
capacity. McKee reached Fort Wayne, and 
there waited for a guide. At that time the 
only mail Chicago had was a monthly one to 
Fort Wayne. He did not wait long before 
the exploring expedition of Major Stephen H. 
Long reached that place, and he accompanied 
it to Chicago. Turning to the history of that 
expedition, by Professor William H. Keating, 
77 



JSemmi£cente£ of <£arip Chicago 

of the University of Pennsylvania, I find that 
orders were issued to Major Long, April 25, 
1823, for him to commence at Philadelphia, 
thence to proceed to Wheeling, thence to 
Chicago or Fort Wayne, thence to Fort Arm- 
strong or Dubuque lead mines, thence up the 
Mississippi to Fort St. Anthony, etc. The 
expedition reached Fort Wayne, May 26, 1823, 
and Professor Keating speaks of the fort then 
there as erected in 1 8 14 on the site of the old 
fort, the location of which had been designated by 
General Anthony Wayne after his victory over 
the confederated Indians on the 20th of August, 
1794, which gave rise to the treaty of Green- 
ville in the following year. The Professor 
says also, that the expedition fortunately met 
at Fort Wayne the express sent from Chicago 
for letters, and obtained him as guide. They 
left Fort Wayne May 29, 1823. Their caval- 
cade consisted of seven persons, including the 
soldier mail-carrier, and a colored servant ; and 
they had two horses loaded with provisions. 
On the 5th of June they reached Fort Dearborn, 
Chicago, having been eight days in traveling 
the distance of 216 miles, an average of 27 
miles a day, their distance exceeding the usual 
allowance by 16 miles, in consequence of their 
circuitous route to avoid the Elkhart River. 
The- railroad train now leaving here at 9 a. m. 
reaches Fort Wayne at 2 p. m. The post at 
Chicago was abandoned a few months after 
the party reached it, in consequence of the 
78 



^ofm t©enttoortf> 



rapid extension of the white population west- 
ward, and the establishment of a chain of 
military posts along the Mississippi River, 
rendering the continuance of the force here 
unnecessary. An Indian agent, Dr. Alexander 
Wolcott, uncle of our present county surveyor 
of the same name, remained here to keep up 
amicable relations with the Indians, and to 
attend to their wants, daily becoming greater 
in consequence of the increasing scarcity of 
game. Fort Dearborn was not occupied by 
soldiers again, except temporarily in transit, 
until 1832, when the Black Hawk troubles 
broke out. When Mr. McKee came here there 
were but two houses; one belonging to John 
Kinzie, the other to his son-in-law, Dr. 
Alexander Wolcott, the Indian agent — Mr. 
Kinzie's having been built first. Both houses 
were built of logs, and lined with cedar bark. 
The third house was built by Joseph Pothier, 
a Frenchman, and one of the voters here in 
1826, and who until recently was a resident of 
Milwaukee. He married an Indian half-breed, 
brought up by Mr. Kinzie, and was striker for 
Mr. McKee in the blacksmith shop. Mr. McKee 
was married by Mr. Kinzie, at Mr. Kinzie's 
house, and he built the fourth house. All four 
houses were on the north side of the river. 

The inhabitants were soldiers, Frenchmen 
in the employ of the American Fur Company, 
and Indians. When the fort was not gar- 
risoned, and the fur-traders were in the country 

79 



J8emimgcence£ of €arip Chicago 

making their purchases, the Indians constituted 
almost the entire population. In 1827-28, 
Mr. McKee carried the mail once a month to 
Fort Wayne. As his Indian pony had to carry 
the mail-bag and the blankets for him to sleep 
upon, he could not carry corn for the pony and 
provisions for himself. He drove the pony in 
front of him, and cut down an elm or bass- 
wood tree for the pony to browse upon during 
the night. He carried a gun with which he 
killed the game for his own food. His route 
was from here to Niles, Michigan, thence to 
Elkhart, Indiana, and thence to Fort Wayne. 
His average trip from this place to Fort Wayne 
was fourteen days; the quickest time he ever 
made was ten days. General John McNeil, one 
of the heroes in the battle of Lundy's Lane, 
commanded the fort when Mr. McKee came 
to Chicago. Soon after his arrival, a sailing 
vessel, called the Heartless, undertook to enter 
the mouth of the river, ran ashore, and was 
beached in the sand. They tried to cut her 
out, but she went to pieces. About a year 
thereafter the first vessel entered the harbor, 
and anchored opposite the fort. It was the 
United States revenue cutter Fairplay, When 
we speak of the first vessel coming to Chicago, 
there is always a confusion between the vessels 
that anchored outside and the vessels that 
actually came up into the river. It is claimed 
that this United States revenue cutter Fairplay 
was the first one to actually enter the river. 
80 



3M)tt f©enttoortf> 



In 1826, there came a sailing vessel called the 
Young Tiger, to enter the river, but she 
anchored out in the lake, slipped her cable, 
and went ashore. 

Mr. E. Buell, now residing in Clinton County, 
Iowa, near Lyons, aged 75, claims that he was 
pilot and navigator on the schooner Aurora, 
Captain Titus, that came to Chicago in 1820 
or 1 821; but he leaves the question unsettled 
as to whether or not he came up into the river. 
The steamers which brought here the troops 
of General Scott, in 1832, had to anchor some 
distance outside. The persons claiming to 
have been upon the first vessel that passed 
over the Chicago bar and came up into the 
river are even more numerous than those claim- 
ing to be descendants of the persons who had 
the first white child born in Chicago. I will 
not discuss this matter now, as the mass of you 
care less about those who had the first child 
than you do about those who are to have the 
next one, and what is to become of it. 

The third man now living who voted in 
Chicago Precinct, Peoria County, in 1830, is 
our well-known fellow-citizen, Mark Beaubien. 
He came here in 1826, to visit his brother, 
John B. Beaubien, who was an employe of the 
American Fur Company, and who lived in a 
log house near the lake shore, near the mouth 
of the river, on the South Side. Mark returned 
to Detroit, and brought his family here, and 
built him a log house, fronting the river, on 
81 



ftemmt^cenceg of oBarip Chicago 

what is known as the "Old Wigwam Lot/' on 
the corner of Lake and Market streets; it being 
at the time the only dwelling-house on the South 
Side, except his brother's. He constructed it 
for hotel purposes, and, when the Indian chief 
Sauganash learned his design, he told him that 
Americans named their hotels after big men, 
and asked him what he was going to call it. 
Mr. Beaubien took the hint, and said, "I'll call 
it Sauganash!" A few years afterwards, he 
built a large addition to it, which was the first 
frame house built on the South Side. It was 
in this house that I took my first meal, on 
my arrival here in 1836, it being then kept by 
John Murphy. Mr. Beaubien was born in 
1800, and in Detroit, where his father was also 
born; but his grandfather was an emigrant 
from France. He established the first ferry, 
at the forks of the river. He was an original 
fiddler, having inherited the art in the natural 
way; and he will probably die one. In case of 
the absence of the music at any of our parties 
in olden times, Mr. Beaubien was always sent 
for, and when one fiddle-string broke, he was 
good for the three; and, when another broke, 
he could still keep up the music; and if there 
were only one string left, a party would never 
go away disappointed if Mr. Beaubien was 
left to play upon it. He has done much to 
keep up our first families, having had twenty- 
three children. His grandchildren had num- 
bered fifty-three when the great-grandchildren 
82 



^Poljn J©enttoortf> 



began to make their appearance, and he stopped 
counting. I introduce him to you today as the 
only man you will probably ever see who wit- 
nessed the surrender of an American army. 
God grant that such an event may never happen 
again! During the war of 1812, Mr. Beaubien's 
father, hearing that the town (Detroit) was 
about to be bombarded by the British army, 
had ordered his children to go down into the 
cellar, when news came that General Hull had 
surrendered. Mark Beaubien saw General 
Hull and his staff rowed over to" the Canadian 
shore, and then the soldiers were taken over 
under the charge of the red-coat officials. 

Cook County was set off from Peoria 
County under an act passed 1 83 1. The first 
election was August, 1832. The county was 
named for the Hon. Daniel P. Cook, son-in-law 
of Governor Ninian Edwards, who was one of 
the first United States Senators from this state. 
Mr. Cook was a member of Congress from 1820 
to 1827, and died in 1827, aged 32, one of the 
most talented men who ever lived in this state. 
As our poll-lists of the first election, in 1832, 
were burnt, I can no longer trace our first 
families, and those who wish to marry into them 
must look back to those who were taxed in 
1825, or voted in 1826 or 1 830, if they do not 
wish their honors disputed. Cook County 
then included the present counties of Lake, 
McHenry, DuPage, and Will, all west being 
included in Jo Daviess County. The only 
83 



&tmmi$tmtt$ of <£arfp Chicago 

voting-place of Cook County at that time was at 
Chicago. The highest number of votes cast 
for all the candidates for any one office in 1832 
was 114, against 32 in 1830 and 35 in 1826. 

It seems to have been the practice then, as 
now, to take our officers from Galena, and 
then, as now, they were very good men. 
Galena and Chicago were then in the same rep- 
resentative and senatorial districts. Colonel 
James M. Strode was elected to the Senate, 
and Benjamin Mills to the House, both being 
attorney s-at-law at Galena. Elijah Went- 
worth, Jr., who died at Galesburg, Illinois, on 
the 1 8th of November last, received all the votes 
for coroner at this election. He wrote me, 
just before his death, that he went with his 
father, Elijah Wentworth, Sr., from Maine to 
Kentucky; they moved thence to Dodgeville, 
Wisconsin, where he was living at the time Jef- 
ferson Davis was constructing Fort Winnebago, 
about 75 miles distant. Davis had been ordered 
there soon after his graduation at West Point 
in 1828, and he often visited Dodgeville in 
attendance upon social parties, and is well re- 
membered by old settlers there to this day. 
In 1830, Mr. Wentworth and his father moved 
to Chicago and rented a new hotel of James 
Kinzie, then the best in Chicago, on the West 
Side, near the forks of the river. It was a 
log house, with upright boards upon the out- 
side. He carried the mail from Chicago to 
Niles once a month. 

84 



3Mm f©enttoortf> 



At the annual election in August, 1834, the 
highest number of votes for all the candidates 
for any one office was 528, against 114 in 1832. 
Thus our population began to increase. This 
vote was for the whole County of Cook. In 
1835, the highest number of votes in the entire 
county, for all the candidates for any one office, 
was 1064. And religious enterprise and liber- 
ality had so far advanced that, at the Ladies* 
Fair at the old St. James, the mother of 
Episcopacy in the Northwest, on the 1 8th of 
June in that year, the receipts "were $1,431. 
In the spring of 1837, at our first municipal 
election, the city alone cast 709 votes.* 

It seems not to be generally known that, 
up to the time of the opening of the Illinois 
and Michigan Canal, Chicago was not at all 
troubled with mosquitoes; a blessing which 
amply compensated for many of our early 
deprivations. 

The history of Chicago furnishes one with a 
complete history of an irredeemable paper- 
money system. Emigration was fast tending 
westward in 1835. Government land was 
$1.25 per acre. The emigrants had little or 
no money, and would purchase land on credit 
at greatly advanced prices. Eastern specu- 
lators flocked here and took advantage of this 
condition of things. The government money 
received for lands would be deposited in the 

♦For list of names on the poll-book, see "Fergus' 
Directory for 1839." 

85 



&tmmi$tmtt$ of oEarip Chicago 

banks, credited to the government, and then 
reloaned back to speculators. Thus the gov- 
ernment had credits in banks to more than the 
amount of their capital, and their assets con- 
sisted almost entirely of the notes of western 
speculators. The government was out of 
debt, and had no use for its surplus, which 
was forming the basis of those large speculative 
loans, and men became even more excited and 
reckless than were the land operators here in 
Chicago at the time of the recent panic. Be- 
sides, money was taken from every branch of 
business to invest in these western specula- 
tions. The President of the United States had 
no power to stop the sales of lands or to limit 
bank discounts. He saw the immediate neces- 
sity of arresting this condition of things, and 
he had no other way to do it than to issue an 
order that nothing but gold and silver should 
be received for the public lands. According 
to an invariable law, a redundancy of paper 
had driven the precious metals out of the 
country, and the banks had not the specie 
wherewith to redeem their bills, which were 
fast being presented to obtain land-office 
money. The banks all failed, and corporations 
and individuals issued certificates of indebted- 
ness, which were interchanged as currency. 
States, counties, and cities paid their debts 
in warrants upon an empty treasury. The 
canal commissioners paid contractors in scrip, 
and the contractors paid their laborers in a 
86 



^ofm a©enttoortf) 



lesser scrip, redeemable in the scrip of the 
commissioners. 

Nearly every man in Chicago doing business 
was issuing his individual scrip, and the city 
abounded with little tickets, such as "Good at 
our store for ten cents," "Good for a loaf of 
bread," "Good for a shave," "Good for a 
drink," etc., etc. When you went out to 
trade, the trader would look over your tickets, 
and select such as he could use to the best 
advantage. The times for a while seemed 
very prosperous. We had a currency that 
was interchangeable, and for a time we suf- 
fered no inconvenience from it, except when 
we wanted some specie to pay for our postage. 
In those days it took 25 cents to send a letter 
east. But after a while it was found out that 
men were over-issuing. The barber had out- 
standing too many shaves; the baker too many 
loaves of bread; the saloon-keeper too many 
drinks, etc., etc. Want of confidence became 
general. Each man became afraid to take the 
tickets of another. Some declined to redeem 
their tickets in any way, and some absconded. 
And people found out, as is always the case 
where there is a redundancy of .paper money, 
that they had been extravagant, had bought 
things they did not need, and had run in debt 
for a larger amount than they were able to pay. 
Of course, nearly everyone failed, and charged 
his failure upon President Jackson's specie 
circular. In after times, I asked an old settler, 
87 



&tmmi$tmtt$ of €arip Chicago 

who was a great growler in those days, what 
effect time had had upon his views of General 
Jackson's circular. His reply was that General 
Jackson had spoiled his being a great man. 
Said he, "I came to Chicago with nothing, 
failed for $100,000, and could have failed for 
a million, if he had left the bubble burst in the 
natural way." 

A single instance will illustrate to what 
various purposes those little tickets of indebted- 
ness could be put. A boy had a ticket "Good 
for a drink.' ' He dropped it into the church 
contribution-box, and heard no more of it. 
He told another boy, who did the same thing 
with the same result. That boy told his sister, 
who told her mother, who told her husband, 
who deemed it his duty to tell the deacon. 
Meanwhile the boys were putting in the tickets 
"Good for a drink/ ' and telling the other 
boys to do the same. The deacon, alive to 
all the responsibilities of his position, for the 
first time in his life entered a saloon, called 
the barkeeper one side, and asked him to 
change a $1 scrip, well knowing he could not 
do so unless it were in liquor-tickets. The 
saloon-keeper was afraid to offer such tickets, 
and declined to make the change, until the 
deacon gave him a hint that, although he did 
not stimulate himself, he thought he could use 
the tickets. Then, said the deacon, "I have 
a curiosity to know the extent of the circulation 
of these tickets, and really wish you would 
88 



^oljtt !©enttoortf> 



put a private mark upon them, and notify me 
when one returns.' ' Think of a deacon put- 
ting such currency into a contribution-box! 
But he did it, and the boys put in some more. 
On Monday afternoon, the deacon was notified 
that one of his tickets had been redeemed. 
Oh, what a chance for a scandal case ! Imagine 
that such a thing had happened in our day! 
Think of our enterprising newsgatherers call- 
ing upon a deacon, and asking him what was 
the average time of a liquor-ticket's going from 
his church contribution-box to a saloon ! With 
solemn tread the deacon made his way to his 
pastor's residence, and asked him what dis- 
position he made of the various tickets taken 
from the contribution-box. The reply was 
that his wife assorted them, strung them upon 
different strings, entered them upon a book, 
and gave the church credit as she used any of 
them. "And do you say, my dear brother," 
asked the deacon, "that you have no knowl- 
edge of the particular uses to which these 
tickets have been put?" "I do say so," said 
the pastor. The deacon breathed freer. He 
had cleared his pastor, but I have no doubt he 
prayed, "May the Lord have mercy on his 
poor wife!" The wife was called, and her 
husband said, "The deacon wishes us to give 
an account of the proceeds of the contribution- 
box." "Not exactly so, my dear sister," said 
the deacon; "but I wish to know for what 
purposes the liquor- tickets have been used." 
89 



fteminigcmceg of €arip Chicago 

She comprehended the matter at once, and 
promptly replied, "Why, deacon, did you 
want them? I never thought you were a 
drinking man. Now, as you didn't have the 
tickets, will you share with us the proceeds? 
Let us all take a drink !" She rushed to her 
pantry, brought out a pitcher, with tumblers, 
and it was filled with — milk! In making the 
change with her milkman his eyes had fallen 
upon these tickets, and he said he could use 
them. Thus throwing the liquor-tickets into 
the contribution-box was but a repetition of 
the old adage, ' 'Evil be thou my good. ' ' They 
had discharged all the function of the modern 
greenback, even to furnishing a poorly paid 
clergyman's children with milk. 

Not long after, our Chicago citizens were 
victimized by another irredeemable currency 
device. Michigan legislators thought that while 
there was not specie enough in the country for 
a banking basis, there was land enough. So 
they passed what is known as the "Real 
Estate Banking Law." They contended that 
real estate was better than gold and silver, 
because a man could not run away with real 
estate. Chicago merchants, business men, and 
speculators generally, instead of paying their 
debts with their money, bought Michigan wild 
lands, had them appraised, and then mortgaged 
them for bills, which they brought home to pay 
their debts with. Real estate, which is gener- 
ally the first property to feel the effects of 
90 



S^n J©enttoortJ> 



inflated currency, soon rose in value, and its 
owners paid Michigan another visit, secured a 
higher appraisal of their lands, and exchanged 
the second mortgage for some bills. For 
about a year we had excellent times again 
in Chicago. But then confidence began to 
weaken. Agents were sent into the country 
to buy anything they could, provided Michigan 
money would be taken. Merchants would post 
in their windows a list of bills that they would 
receive for a given day, and then revise the 
list for the next day. The bubble soon burst, 
and every one was the poorer for the good 
times he had enjoyed. Manual labor, which 
was the last thing to rise, was the last resting- 
place of the worthless bills. 

During all this excitement incident to our 
great variety of irredeemable paper, our suffer- 
ings were the greatest for postage money, 
which had always to be in specie, and specie 
was then at from 50 to 1 00 per cent premium 
in our depreciated currency. But postage 
was then reckoned by the sheet instead of by 
weight. The result was that, although friends 
wrote but seldom, their letters were a sort of 
daily journal. When anything occurred to 
them, they would write it out; and when they 
had filled a sheet, oftentimes writing crossways 
also, they mailed it as soon as they could raise 
the postage. In traveling at the East, I have 
fallen in with several of these letters written 
in early times, whose publication would add 
9i 



JSeminigcenceg of €arip Chicago 

materially to the early history of our city. But 
their contents were so mixed up with private 
matters appertaining to different families that 
it is impossible to obtain possession of them. 
As our laboring men were paid in currency, it 
often took more than a day's work to pay the 
postage on a letter to an eastern friend. 

I will relate an anecdote to illustrate this 
matter. Soon after my first election to Con- 
gress, a young man who had rendered me 
material service made me a call, and observed 
that postage was very high; in which sentiment 
I concurred, and promised to labor to reduce 
it. He then remarked that I would have the 
franking privilege; to which I assented, and 
promised to labor to abolish it. But all this 
did not seem to interest the young man, and I 
was perplexed to know the drift of his conver- 
sation. Finally, with great embarrassment, he 
observed that he was engaged to a young lady 
at the East, and wanted to know if I could not 
frank his letters. I explained that there was 
but one way to avoid the responsibilities of the 
law, and that was for him to write his letters 
to me, and then I could write a letter to her, 
calling her attention to his; and she could have 
the same privilege. The correspondence took 
this form until the congressman from her dis- 
trict asked me if, at the close of the session, I 
was going home by the way of his district. I 
did not comprehend him until he stated that 
he was well acquainted in the family of the 
92 



^o&n f©enttoortf> 



lady with whom I had been corresponding, and 
suggested that, if I was going to be married 
before the next session, it would be pleasant 
for us to board at the same house! This put 
a new phase upon my way of dodging an abuse 
of the franking privilege, and I wrote to my 
constituent that he must bring his courtship to 
a close, and he did so. Four letters from him 
and three from her covered the transaction, 
and I stand indebted to this day to the "con- 
science-fund" of the Post-Office, Department 
for $1.75. But this was a very insignificant 
sum to pay for the securing of a good Yankee 
girl to the West in those days. Besides, there 
are seven in the family now, and one went to 
the war; and that $1.75 was an insignificant 
bounty to pay for a soldier. After all, the 
best way to procure soldiers is to breed them 
yourself. But every time anyone speaks to 
me about corruptions and defalcations among 
public men of the present day, I see "mene, 
mene, tekel, upharsin" written on the wall! 
I think of that $1.75, and say nothing. 

Not satisfied with the real estate banking 
experiment in Michigan, of trying to make easy 
times without prompt specie redemption, some 
of the speculators of Illinois thought that they 
would try the Michigan system, with state 
bonds substituted for lands. The result of 
this last experiment is too familiar to the mass 
of our citizens to need an extended comment. 
Money was borrowed, and the state bonds 
93 



*Seminigcence£ of <£arip Chicago 

were purchased. The most inaccessible places 
in our state were sought out for the location 
of banks, and bills were extensively issued. 
Money was abundant, prices of everything 
advanced, and a financial millennium was once 
more among us. The consequences of this 
system were quite as disastrous as those of the 
real estate system of Michigan. Considering 
its age, Chicago has been the greatest sufferer 
of any place in the world from an irredeemable 
paper-money system. Its losses in this respect 
will nearly approximate those from the great 
fire. And when you talk to one of the early 
settlers of Chicago about the advantages ac- 
cruing from an irredeemable money system, 
you waste your labor. He has been there! 

One of our early amusements was that of 
wolf-hunting. Experienced Indian ponies were 
plenty in our city. The last hunt I remember 
had for its object the driving of as large a 
number of wolves as possible up to the ice 
upon the lake shore, and as near the mouth of 
the harbor as could be done. There was to 
be no shooting until the wolves had got upon 
the ice. No person was to fire unless his aim 
was entirely over ice, and then to the eastward. 
Two parties started early in the morning, one 
following the lake shore south, and the other 
the river, to meet at a common centre not far 
from Blue Island. Then they were to spread 
themselves out, cover as much territory as 
possible, and drive the wolves before them. 

94 



Stofm t©enttoortf) 



About 4 o'clock in the afternoon, a wolf made 
his appearance in the outskirts of the city. 
The news was spread, and our people turned 
out on foot, keeping along the margin of the 
river, so as to drive the wolves upon the ice of 
the lake shore. One wolf after another made 
his appearance, and soon we saw the horsemen. 
The number of wolves was about the same as 
that of Samson's foxes. The men were so 
eager to get the first fire at a wolf that the 
tramp of their horses broke the ice; and, as 
the wind was rather brisk, it broke away from 
the shore, with the wolves upon it, and drifted 
northeasterly, very much in the same direction 
as that taken by the recent unfortunate balloon. 
But the wolves, unlike the man in the balloon, 
took no reporter on board. Men, women, and 
children lined the bank of the lake, expecting 
to see the ice break in pieces and the wolves 
swim ashore. But it did not do so. Our 
people watched the ice, and could see the 
wolves running from side to side, until they 
faded away from view. When I took my last 
look, they appeared about the size of mice. 

About two weeks afterwards, a letter ap- 
peared in a Detroit paper containing an 
account of some farm settlements, on the east- 
ern shore of Lake Michigan, being attacked 
by a large body of hungry wolves. They 
destroyed fowls and cattle, and for several 
days spread terror through the neighborhood. 
We always supposed that those were our 
95 



titmMgtmttg of €arip Cfticaso 

wolves, but our hunters never laid any claim 
to them, as the news of their arrival was so 
long in reaching here. And, as an evidence of 
the tardy transit of merchandise and mails in 
those days, I will state that our newspapers of 
September, 1835, announce the arrival of a 
schooner, with goods, twenty days from New 
York City, the shortest time ever made. A 
newspaper of December 24, 1836, announces 
that President Jackson's message to Congress 
was only twelve days on its route from Wash- 
ington. It was published here Saturday, but 
the editor says he would have issued it on 
Thursday, but for the extreme cold weather. 

The first divorce suit in our city was brought 
in 1835. 

Land speculation had become so brisk here 
in 1835, that from January 4th to October 
2 1st of that year the papers announce that 
Augustus Garrett (afterward mayor of the city) 
had sold land at his auction-rooms to the 
amount of $ 1, 800, OOO. Our people had com- 
menced litigation so much that at the com- 
mencement of Cook County circuit court in 
May, 1836, there were 230 cases on the civil 
docket, and the court sat two weeks. Litigation 
so increased that in May, 1837, there were 700 
cases on the civil docket. The newspapers 
pointed to the alarming fact that over a million 
dollars were involved in these cases. 

The West Side was the last to advance in 
population. Although at one time, prior to 
96 



SW&n t©enttoortf> 



the city's incorporation, it undoubtedly had, as 
it does now, the largest portion of our inhabit- 
ants, there were only 97 voters on the whole 
West Sidfc at our first municipal election. 
These were mostly from our first families, as 
there were living there about that time three 
Indian chiefs, Sauganash, Laframboise, and 
Robinson (whose Indian name was Che-che- 
pin-gua), with occasional visits from Shaboneh; 
and any number of Indians, French, and mixed 
breeds related to them. The West Side was 
the last side to have a piano, but the strains 
of the fiddle were always to be heard, and the 
war-dance was no uncommon thing. I re- 
member attending the wedding of one of 
Laframboise's daughters. She was married to 
a clerk in the post office, and is now the wife 
of Medard B. Beaubien, heretofore alluded to 
in this lecture. The clerk was the one who de- 
livered letters, and of course was well known to 
all our citizens, and was remarkably popular. 
He went to the printing office and had fifty cards 
of invitation struck off. But when people went 
for their letters, they politely hinted that they 
expected a card of invitation to the wedding. 
So he was compelled to go to the printing 
office and have fifty more struck off. These 
did not last long, and he had one hundred more. 
Then he said that tickets were of no use, and 
everybody might come; and about everyone did 
come . The ceremony was performed by Rever- 
end Isaac W. Hallam, pastor of the St. James 
97 



J5emmi£cenceg of oEarlp Chicago 

Episcopal Church of this city. Everything 
was high-toned, well worthy of an Indian chief's 
daughter. The house was of no particular 
use, as it was full and surrounded with people. 
This wedding made a strong impression on my 
mind, as it was the first time I ever saw the 
Indian war dance. Some of the guests not 
only had their tomahawks and scalping-knives, 
bows and arrows, but a few of them had real 
scalps, which they pretended they had taken in 
the various Indian wars. Their faces were 
decorated with all the favorite pictures of the 
Indians. And some of our young white men 
and ladies played the part of the Indian so well 
that it was difficult to distinguish them from 
the real ones. It has been a wonder to me 
that, while our professors of music have been 
inventing so many different kinds of dances, 
none of them have reproduced the Indian war 
dance, which to me is much more sensible 
than nine tenths of those which are now 
practiced at so many of our fashionable parties. 
I presume that the trouble is, that our ladies 
consider that the Indian war paint extemporized 
for the occasion would interfere with the 
original paint put on before they left their 
homes, and which they wished to remain through 
the evening. One of our young men claimed 
that, at this wedding, amid the crowd, unper- 
ceived, he had clipped a lock from the bride's 
long, flowing, raven hair. Some of this hair 
he had put into a breastpin, and very soon 



^oJjn t©enttoortf> 



thereafter, these Indian bridal breastpins were 
about as thick as were the manufactures from 
our old court-house bell after the fire. One 
man who had worn one for some years was 
suddenly taken sick, and expected to die. He 
called his wife to his bedside, and told her he 
deemed it his duty to state to her that he had 
been deceiving her for years, and he could not 
die in peace until he had made a confession. 
"I must tell you before I die, that the hair in 
that pin I have been wearing so deceitfully is 
not the hair of that Indian chief's daughter, 
but your own." With pitiful eyes he looked 
to his wife for forgiveness. "And is that all 
that troubles you ? ' ' said she ; l ' what you have 
just revealed in your dying hour only confirms 
my opinion of you. I always supposed you 
thought more of me than you did of a squaw !" 
And now I suppose you think that that man 
died in peace. But he did not. He is alive 
now. There is occasionally an instance where 
a man has survived a confession to his wife. 
But where, oh where, is there an instance of 
a woman who has survived a confession to 
her husband ? 

After the marriage of this Indian chief's 
daughter, several of our wealthy citizens (wealthy 
for those days) gave return parties. I remember 
attending a very elegant one given at the house 
of Medard B. Beaubien. I think the fashion- 
able society of Chicago subsisted for about 
two months upon that wedding. Mr. Beaubien 

99 



MtmM$tmtt$ of <£arlp Chicago 

has given me several invitations, as he has 
others of our old settlers, to visit him at his 
residence among the Pottawatomies. He told 
me that I would be a big Pottawatomie! He 
gave as a reason for abandoning Chicago, 
where he was a merchant, that he would rather 
be a big Indian than a little white man. He 
has the reputation of being the handsomest 
man that was ever in this city. I met him at 
Washington, a few years ago, and he attracted 
great attention for his remarkable personal 
beauty. 

The most of the families of wealth, educa- 
tion, and high social position, about the time 
of our incorporation, were settled on the North 
Side. The "Lake House' ' there was the first 
brick hotel constructed in our city, and it was 
as well furnished and conducted as any hotel 
west of New York City. Upon the South Side 
were most of the business houses and hotels 
that were kept for the accommodation of 
farmers who came to Chicago with their loads 
of grain. Business men without families, 
clerks, and employes of business men generally 
boarded at these hotels on the South Side, 
often sleeping in the stores. We could not 
have anything like a large party on the South 
Side without female domestics. The fashion- 
able people on the North Side would invite our 
young men to their parties on that side; but 
when we had a party on the South Side, instead 
of coming themselves, the ladies would send 
ioo 



^ofm t©enttoortf> 



their domestics. And if I were to go into 
details of the origin of the fashionable society 
of Chicago of the present day, I could satisfy 
our young men that, whether they wanted to 
make money or raise healthy children, the best 
thing they could now do would be to imitate 
the example of some of our early settlers, and 
marry a lady who dares discharge an impudent 
or incompetent maid, and can do the work her- 
self till she can get a better one. 

There was considerable ill-feeling at one 
time between the North and South sides in 
consequence of this discrimination. But poli- 
tics then, as now, proved a great leveler in 
society. There was an elegant party given at 
the Lake House one evening, where one of the 
most fashionable men of the North Side, who 
was a candidate for office, thought he would 
throw an anchor to the windward by dancing 
with a South Side dressing-maid, while he 
supposed his wife was being entertained at the 
supper table. But she entered the ball-room 
while the dance was going on. At once a 
proud heart was fired. Quicker than thought 
she spoke to a carriage driver who stood at 
the door looking in: "Can you dance, Mike?" 
"It's only for the want of a partner,' ' was the 
response. Seizing him by the hand, she said, 
"Come on ! ' ' and turning to the crowd she said, 
"This is a game that two can play at!" and 
immediately the dance went on, amid the 
applause of the whole room; the man with the 

IOI 



iSemtmgcenceg of €arip Chicago 

South Side dressing-maid, and his wife with 
the South Side driver. And thus free suffrage 
began its work against artificial social position. 
Not long after my first election to Congress, 
upon opening my mail at Washington, I found 
a letter dated in the western part of Iowa, 
then far in the wilderness, reading in this way: 

My Dear Old Chicago Friend: I see you 
have been getting up in the world, and it is so with 
myself, who am the sheriff's deputy here, and I also 
keep hotel. I am the same one who made all the fuss 
dancing with the lady at the Lake House ball, and 
you were there ; and the girl I married is the same 
domestic her husband danced with. The judge of 
the court boards at our house, and he often dances 
with my wife at the big parties here, where we are 
considered among the first folks, and I reckon my 
wife Bridget would put on as many airs as the lady 
did at the Lake House, if she should catch me danc- 
ing with domestics. I found out that those people 
who made so much fuss at the Lake House were not 
considered much where they came from. But they 
emigrated to Chicago, and then set up for big 
folks. So I thought I would marry Bridget and 
start for a new country where I could be as big as 
anybody. And now remember your old Chicago 
friend, and tell the President I am for his adminis- 
tration, and would like to get the post-office here. 

I remember that, during that session of 
Congress, I boarded at the same house with 
Horace Greeley, and he was frequently in my 
room; and I think that it was from this letter 
he borrowed his sentiment, "Go west, young 
man!" 

In our early times, it was customary to 
102 



^ofm IBatttoortf) 



excommunicate members of the church as pub- 
licly as they had been admitted. Now we 
hear admissions, but never of excommunica- 
tions. Professor David Swing has come as 
near filling that bill as anyone we have heard 
of recently, but future historians will differ as 
to whether he excommunicated the church or 
the church him. I remember in early times 
here of a clergyman's dealing, at the close of 
his service, with a member, one of our well- 
known citizens, somewhat after this fashion: 
"You will remember, my hearers, that some 
time ago Mr. Blank was proposed for admission 
to this church, and after he had passed a 
favorable examination I called upon everyone 
present to know if there was any objection, 
and no one rose and objected. It becomes 
my painful duty now to pronounce the sentence 
of excommunication upon him, and to remand 
him back to the world again with all his sins 
upon his head." Whereupon a gentleman 
rose in his pew and said: "And now the world 
objects to receiving him! ,J On which bursts 
of laughter filled the house; and the precise 
status of that man was never determined, as 
the civil courts in those days had not begun to 
interfere in ecclesiastical matters. In these 
times the church would undoubtedly have called 
upon the courts to grant a mandamus upon 
the world to receive him, or the world would 
have applied for an injunction to prevent the 
church from excommunicating him. 
103 



Mtmxm$tmtt$ of <£arip Chicago 

In most new settlements there can always 
be pointed out some particular class who give 
tone to the early society ; such as the Pilgrims 
and Puritans of New England, the Knicker- 
bockers of New York, the Huguenots of South 
Carolina, the Creoles of New Orleans; and, 
in the later days, men identified with manu- 
facturing interests, mining interests, railroad 
interests, or with seminaries of learning. But 
here in Chicago, in early times, we had not 
any one prevailing class or interest ; nor was 
there any sufficient number of people from 
any particular locality to exercise a controlling 
influence in molding public sentiment. We 
had people from almost every clime, and of 
almost every opinion. We had Jews and 
Christians, Protestants, Catholics, and infidels; 
among Protestants, there were Calvinists and 
Armenians. Nearly every language was repre- 
sented here. Some people had seen much of 
the world, and some very little. Some were 
quite learned, and some very ignorant. We 
had every variety of people, and out of these 
we had to construct what is called society. 
The winters were long; no railroads, no tele- 
graphs, no canal, and all we had to rely upon 
for news were our weekly newspapers. We 
had no libraries, no lectures, no theatres or 
other places of amusement. If a stranger 
attended a gathering of any kind, the mass of 
attendants were equally strangers with himself; 
and the gentlemen outnumbered the ladies by 
104 



^ofjtt H&enttoort!) 



about four or five to one. You ask what society 
lived upon in those days? I answer, upon 
faith. But faith without works is dead. From 
the close to the opening of navigation, nearly 
six months in the year, we had nothing to do. 
Our faith consisted principally in the future of 
Chicago. Nearly everyone had laid out a 
town, and men exchanged lots with each other, 
very much as boys swap jack-knives. The 
greatest story-teller was about as big a man as 
we had. If a new story was told, it was soon 
passed all round town, and due credit given to 
the originator. If a new book appeared in our 
midst, that was loaned around until another 
new one came to take its place. Occasionally, 
one of our young men would go east and get 
him a wife, and then we discussed her for a 
while. Dressmakers would invariably make 
her the first call, examine her dresses, and then 
go from door to door, like a modern census- 
taker or tax-collector, soliciting orders according 
to the latest fashions. 

There was great prejudice between the emi- 
grants from the South and those from the East. 
All our eastern people were considered by the 
emigrants from the South as Yankees. The 
first contest was about the convention system 
in politics. Southerners denounced it vehe- 
mently as a Yankee innovation upon the old 
system of allowing every man to run for office 
who wanted to do so, and taking Jiis chances. 
Their system was to solicit their friends to 
105 



JSemmigcenceg of <£arlp Chicago 

solicit them to run for office, and then they 
reluctantly consented, and placed themselves 
in the hands of their friends. All Yankee 
customs, fashions, and innovations upon their 
established usages were ridiculed as Yankee 
notions, worthy only of the peddlers of wooden 
clocks and pewter spoons. 

Thomas Ford, born in Uniontown, Pennsyl- 
vania, in 1800, who had lived in Illinois from 
1804, and whose father had been killed by the 
Indians, came here as judge, and did more 
than any other person to mollify the prejudices 
of the South against the North. He early 
foresaw that all that the early settlers of Illinois 
needed was the growth of more Yankee thrift 
among them; and he early told his friends that 
while he stayed here he was going to conform 
to all the Yankee notions, as fast as he could 
ascertain what they were, and wanted his 
acquaintances to inform him what he should do 
to prevent embarrassment by non-conformity. 
I met him on his way to court one morning, 
and he said he had just been detained by a lady 
complaining that he did not attend her party on 
a previous evening. He told her that he was 
very fond of parties, and always attended them 
whenever he could, but that he held court that 
evening until it was too late to go. But this 
did not satisfy her. She wanted to know, if he 
could not attend, why he did not send a "regret.' ' 
He did not understand the matter, and made an 
excuse that the court was waiting, informing 
106 



Stotm t©cnttoortf> 



her that he would converse with her some other 
time. "But," said he, " what's that? What 
did she want me to do when I couldn't go? " 
I informed him that the lady had some sisters 
visiting her from the East, and she had a pride 
in having them write home that among her 
friends were the very best people in Chicago, 
and among them the judge of the court; which 
in his absence, a little note from him would 
establish. ' 'Capital, capital, ' ' said he . ' 'Why, 
you Yankees have a motive in all you do. You 
turn everything to account. The longer I live 
among Yankees the more I see why it is they 
are getting rich and overrunning the country. 
Nobody shall complain of me hereafter in that 
respect. I'll have some note-paper in my desk, 
and if the lawyers detain me, I'll send the 
sheriff with one of those little billet-doux. If 
there is any other thing that you Yankees want 
me to do to testify my high appreciation of you, 
please let me know." The next day the Judge 
called at my office with a beautiful little note, 
on gilt-edged paper addressed to his wife, and 
reading as follows : ' ' Judge Ford's compliments 
to Mrs. Ford and the children, and regrets that 
he cannot be home to have the pleasure of 
their society on Monday next." Below this 
was the following postscript: "The above is 
one of the Yankee notions, and when you want 
to go anywhere and cannot, you must always 
send one of these, which they call a 'regret.' 
Please tell this to the neighbors, and also tell 
107 



ftemmigcettteg of <£arip Chicago 

them that when I return I shall have a great 
many stories to tell them about different Yankee 
notions.' ' 

Not long after, I was at Oregon, Ogle 
County, where he resided, and where he was 
then holding court. When it became time 
for the sheriff to adjourn the court, the Judge 
said, "Mr. Sheriff, don't forget that party at 
my house tonight." And the sheriff ex- 
claimed, ' ' Hear ye ! Hear ye ! The Judge of 
this Court requests me to say, that he and his 
lady would be pleased to see you all at his 
house tonight, both citizens and strangers! 
Now this honorable Court stands adjourned 
until tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock." It 
was wonderful to notice the mixture of people 
who unceremoniously visited him that evening 
— attorneys, jurors, suitors, and citizens gener- 
ally, with their wives. One person seemed as 
much at home as another. There was a grand 
welcome for all. He was the very prince of 
hospitality. His small house could not contain 
the crowd, and many stood outside and mingled 
in the entertainments. The Judge passed 
through the assembly with a waiter on which 
was a decanter of Madeira wine, and wine- 
glasses. His wife passed around with another 
waiter loaded with cake. Said the Judge to 
some Yankee gentlemen, "This is the way we 
original Illinoisans give a party. We invite 
all; the latchstring is out; all come who can, 
and those who cannot come say nothing. 
108 



gtoljn f©enttoortl> 



They never write any 'regret.' Indeed, a 
great many of our prominent men at the South 
could not do it. I have known men in our 
legislature who could not write." Then he 
passed away into a group of people who were 
natives of the South, and told them how he 
got himself into trouble with a Chicago lady 
by not writing her a little billet-doux explaining 
to her why he did not go to her party, when 
he wanted to go more than she wanted to have 
him. He often uttered the sentiment that he 
did not wish to live in a locality where his 
house was not large enough to entertain his 
neighbors without making selections. He said 
he must either build him a larger house or 
move into a distant settlement. When I came 
away I expressed the wish that I might soon 
have the pleasure of seeing him and his neigh- 
bors in Chicago. Whereupon the Judge 
jocosely observed, "We will either come and see 
you or send you a billet-doux." But a South- 
ern Illinoisan, a native of North Carolina, 
exclaimed, "Yes, when you Yankee peddlers 
are putting up wooden clocks and pewter 
spoons for this region, tell them to put up a 
little gold-edged note-paper for us, and have 
them to be sure that the gold isn't bronze!" 
But the people of this state settled the house 
question for Judge Ford. For, at the next 
gubernatorial election, he was made its chief 
magistrate, and as governor he rendered his 
name dear to every Illinoisan by his almost 
109 



ftemim£tence£ of €arip Chicago 

superhuman, but eminently successful, efforts 
to complete the Illinois and Michigan Canal, 
and to restore the lost credit of our state. He 
died not long after the expiration of his term 
of office, and he left to his children only the 
proceeds of the copyright of his History of 
Illinois — a book which, when once com- 
menced, no reader will lay aside until he has 
finished it. In this work is the only authori- 
tative history of the settlement of the Mormons 
in this state, and their final expulsion from it, 
with the assassination of their leader, Joseph 
Smith. In his preface he says: "The author 
has written about small events and little men. 
And in all those matters in which the author 
has figured personally, it will be some relief to 
the reader to find that he has not attempted to 
blow himself up into a great man.'* 

One of our most reliable places of entertain- 
ment was the post office while the mail was 
being opened. The post office was on the 
west side of Franklin Street, cornering on 
South Water Street. The mail coach was 
irregular in the time of its arrival, but the horn 
of the driver announced its approach. Then 
the people would largely assemble at the post 
office, and wait for the opening of the mails, 
which at times were very heavy. The post- 
master would throw out a New York paper, 
and some gentleman with a good pair of lungs 
and a jocose temperament would mount a dry- 
goods box and commence reading. Occasion- 
no 



^Pofm fBenttoortfj 



ally I occupied that position myself. During 
exciting times, our leading men would invari- 
ably go to the post office themselves, instead 
of sending their employes. The news would 
be discussed by the assemblage, and oftentimes 
heavy bets would be made and angry words 
passed. If it was election times, there would 
be two papers thrown out, of opposite politics, 
two reading stands established, two readers 
engaged, and the men of each party would 
assemble around their own reader. This con- 
dition of, things would last until the mails were 
opened, when the gathering would adjourn 
until the next blowing of the driver's horn. 
This gathering afforded the best opportunity 
for citizens to become acquainted one with 
another. 

On one of these occasions, I was introduced 
to a lieutenant in the army who had just come 
to take charge of the government works in 
this city. He had great confidence in our 
future, and expressed his intention to invest all 
his means here. He was eventually ordered 
away to some other station, but kept up his 
interest in Chicago. His taxes became high, 
too high in proportion to his pay as an army 
officer and the support of his family. His 
wife had once placed the price of a new dress 
in a letter which was to leave by the return of 
a mail which brought her husband an exorbi- 
tant tax bill. He expressed his intention of 
ordering, by the same mail, the sale of his 
in 



MtmM$tmtt$ of €arip Chicago 

Chicago property, as his means could endure 
his taxes no longer. His wife ordered her 
letter from the mail, took out the money, and, 
saying that she preferred the Chicago property 
to a new dress, insisted that he should use it 
to pay his Chicago taxes. The next summer 
he visited our city, and rented his property for 
enough to pay the taxes. That lady lost her 
dress for that year, but she gained thereby one 
of the largest and most celebrated (Kingsbury) 
estates in our city. I mention this fact to 
warn our ladies that they should never ask for 
a new dress until they find their husband's 
tax receipt in his wallet; and, at the same time, 
I would caution husbands not to try to carry 
so much real estate as to make their poorly 
clad wives and children objects of charity when 
they make their appearance in the streets. 

Our early settlers were distinguished for 
their liberal patronage of all religious denom- 
inations, and we had one clergyman who cre- 
ated as much sensation as any we have had 
since his day. Like all really influential sen- 
sational preachers, he was an original. He 
dealt freely in pathos and in ridicule. If we 
cried once we were sure to laugh once, in every 
sermon. Unlike clergymen now called sensa- 
tional, he never quoted poetry, nor told anec- 
dotes, nor used slang phrases for the purpose 
of creating a laugh. There was nothing second- 
handed about him. I allude to Rev. Isaac T. 
Hinton, a Baptist clergyman, who was the 

112 



^Poftn IBenttoortI) 



only settled minister on the South Side when 
I came here in 1836. His residence was near 
the corner of Van Buren Street and Fifth 
Avenue, then in the outskirts of the city, and 
was shaded by native oaks. He was a man 
who never seemed so happy as when he was 
immersing converted sinners in our frozen river 
or lake. It is said of his converts that no one 
of them was ever known to be a backslider. 
If you could see the cakes of ice that were 
raked out to make room for baptismal purposes, 
you would make up your mind that no man 
would join a church under such circumstances 
unless he joined to stay. Immersions were no 
uncommon thing in those days. One cold day, 
about the first part of February, 1 839, there 
were 17 immersed in the river at the foot of 
State Street. A hole about 20 feet square was 
cut through the ice, and a platform was sunk, 
with one end resting upon the shore. Among 
the 17 was our well-known architect, John M. 
Van Osdell, alderman-elect, said to be now the 
only survivor. There are many now living 
who were baptized by Mr. Hinton; among 
them is the wife of Hon. Thomas Hoyne, 
mayor-elect. But recently our Baptist friends 
have made up their minds that our lake has 
enough to do to carry away all the sewerage 
of the city, without washing off the sins of the 
people. It is also claimed for Mr. Hinton 
that no couple he married was ever divorced. 
He was just as careful in marrying as he 
"3 



JSemtn&cmceg of <£arip C&icago 

was in baptizing; he wanted nobody to fall 
from grace. 

It was the custom in those days to give 
clergymen donation parties. Now, we have 
surprise parties, where the lady is expected to 
endanger her health by hard working all day 
in order to prepare her house for a surprise in 
the evening. The only surprise about them is 
the magnificence of the preparations. Then 
the party was advertised in the newspapers, 
and a notice posted in the vestibule of the 
church. 

It was customary in those days for all denom- 
inations to patronize liberally the clergymen of 
other denominations. 

Mr. Hinton had a family of children nearly 
grown up, and consequently all the young 
people, as well as the old, would be there to 
have a grand frolic at his donation party. 
There were no religious services, and the house 
was completely taken possession of by the 
multitude. People would send just what they 
happened to have, and it would look at times 
as if Parson Hinton was going into the storage 
business. Cords of wood would be piled be- 
fore the door; flour, salt, pork, beef, box- 
raisins, lemons, oranges, herring, dry goods, 
anything and everything. After the donation 
party was over, there was always a large 
quantity left which he did not need, but he 
knew exactly where to place it — among the 
destitute of the city. Probably no occasions 
114 



^Fofjn i©enttoortft 



are remembered with more pleasure by the old 
settlers of this city than those gatherings at 
the hospitable mansion of the jolly English 
preacher, with his attractive laugh, who always 
enjoyed a good story and could generally tell 
a better one. There are many married couples 
in this city who will tell you that there was 
where they first met. 

The first Sabbath I passed in this city, my 
good boarding-house mistress (Mrs. John 
Murphy, present on this platform to-day) took 
me with her to his church, as was the custom 
of Christian ladies with strange young men in 
those days. He told me that godliness was 
profitable unto all things; and he was right. 
Christian men and women have not kept up 
this good old custom of taking young men, 
strangers in the city, to church with them, and 
using their efforts to lead them to a high 
social position with their religious instruction. 
Strange young men now in this city are told 
that there is a moral infirmary opened here, 
entirely for their benefit, where the seats are 
all free, and men are supported expressly to 
save such as they are from destruction. I 
never knew a young man to amount to any- 
thing if he had no respect for his social posi- 
tion; and that position can never be attained 
where young men are turned away for religious 
instruction to places to visit which they would 
not think of inviting a young lady to leave a 
respectable church to accompany them. All 

115 



JSemmigcettceg of €arip Chicago 

honor to those clergymen and Christians of 
Chicago who have their weekly church sociables, 
where young men are brought forward into re- 
spectable social intercourse, as well as moral 
development. The celebrated Indian chief, 
Black Hawk, covered the whole ground when 
he said to General Jackson, "You are a man, 
and I am another!" 

Not feeling able to sustain the expense of a 
whole pew, I engaged one in partnership with 
an unpretending saddle and harness maker 
(S. B. Cobb), who, by a life of industry, econ- 
omy, and morality, has accumulated one of 
the largest fortunes in our city, and still walks 
our streets with as little pretense as when he 
mended the harnesses of the farmers who 
brought the grain to this market from our 
prairies. The church building in those days 
was considered a first-class one, and we had a 
first-class pew therein, and the annual expense 
of my half of the pew was only $12.50 more 
than it would have been in our Saviour's time. 
People wonder at the rapid increase in the 
price of real estate at the West; but it bears 
no comparison with the increase in the price 
of gospel privileges. A good clergyman is 
well worth all that a liberal-hearted congrega- 
tion may see fit to pay him. But the people 
ought to cry out against the reckless waste of 
money, steadily increasing, in the erection of 
extravagant church edifices. And the pride 
in such matters seems to eat up all other 
116 



^otm f©enttoortf> 



considerations. During the recent panic, a 
Christian lady of this city, with a large family 
of children, whose husband was suddenly re- 
duced from opulence to penury, astonished me 
by observing, with tears in her eyes, that her 
most grievous affliction was that she would be 
compelled to give up her pew in the church, 
which was one of the most expensive in the 
city, and take one in a cheaper edifice. And 
yet our people sing in every church, ' ' God is 
present everywhere !' ' 

At the close of service one day, Parson 
Hinton said he thought Chicago people ought 
to know more about the devil than they did. 
Therefore he would take up his history, in four 
lectures; first, he would give the origin of the 
devil; second, state what the devil has done; 
third, state what the devil is now doing; and 
fourth, prescribe how to destroy the devil. 
These lectures were the sensation for the next 
four weeks. The house could not contain the 
mass that flocked to hear him, and it is a 
wonder to me that those four lectures have 
not been preserved. Chicago newspaper en- 
terprise had not then reached here. The third 
evening was one never to be forgotten in this 
city; as it would not be if one of our most 
eminent clergymen, with the effective manner 
of preaching that Mr. Hinton had, should under- 
take to tell us what the devil is doing in this 
city to-day. The drift of his discourse was to 
prove that everybody had a devil; that the 

"7 



fteminigcenceg of <£arip Chicago 

devil was in every store, and in every bank, 
and he did not even except the church. He 
had the devil down outside and up the middle 
of every dance; in the ladies' curls, and the 
gentlemen's whiskers. In fact, before he fin- 
ished, he proved conclusively that there were 
just as many devils in every pew as there were 
persons in it; and if it were in this our day, 
there would not have been swine enough in 
the Stock Yards to cast them into. When 
the people came out of church, they would ask 
each other, "What is your devil?' ' And they 
would stop one another in the streets during 
the week, and ask, "What does Parson Hinton 
say your devil is?" The fourth lecture con- 
tained his prescription for destroying the devil. 
I remember his closing: "Pray on, brethren 
and friends; pray ever. Fight as well as pray. 
Pray and fight until the devil is dead! 

"The world, the flesh, the devil, 
Will prove a fatal snare, 
Unless we do resist him, 
By faith and humble prayer." 

In this grand contest with his Satanic 
Majesty, he, our leader, fought gloriously, but 
he fell early in the strife. We, his hearers, 
have kept up a gallant fight to this day, but 
judging by our morning papers, the devil is 
still far from being dead. Yet we dealt him 
some heavy blows at the recent election ! 

An interesting institution was the ferry-boat 
between the North and South sides. It was 
118 



gpoftn t©cnttoottft 



a general intelligence office. Business was 
done principally upon the South Side, while 
most of the dwelling-houses were upon the 
North Side. The ferryman knew about every 
person in town, and could answer any question 
as to who had crossed. The streets had not 
then been raised to their present grade, nor 
the river deepened or widened, and the boat 
was easily accessible to teams. It was pulled 
across by a rope, and was not used enough to 
kill the green rushes which grew in the river. 
If a lady came upon the South Side to pass an 
evening, she would leave word with the ferry- 
man where her husband could find her. 
Bundles and letters were left with him to be 
delivered to persons as they passed. He was 
a sort of superannuated sailor, and if he had 
not sailed into every port in the world, he had 
a remarkable faculty of making people think 
he had. His fund of stories was inexhaustible, 
and he was constantly spinning his interesting 
yarns to those who patronized his institution. 
Like most sailors, he could not pull unless he 
sung, and to all his songs had one refrain with 
a single variation. His voice was loud and 
sonorous. If he felt dispirited, his refrain 
was, "And I sigh as I pull on my boat. ,, If 
he felt jolly (and people took particular pains 
to make him so), his refrain was, "And I sing 
as I pull on my boat." All night long this 
refrain was disturbing the ears of those who 
dwelt near the banks of the river. Song after 
119 



jSemtmgcenceg of <£arip Chicago 

song was composed for him, in the hope of 
changing his tune, but it would not be long 
before he would attach to it his usual refrain. 
One of our musical composers composed a 
quadrille, which our young folks used to dance 
in the evening on the ferry, during certain 
portions of which they would all join in old 
Jack's refrain, and sing, "And we'll dance as 
we ride on the boat." There was a little boy 
who took great delight in Jack's company, 
whose parents lived on the margin of the river 
near the ferry, and as in the last of his sick- 
ness he was burning with a violent fever, 
nothing would quiet him but the sound of old 
Jack's voice. Old Jack had just sung, "And 
I sigh as I pull on my boat," when the boy 
whispered his last words to his mother, "And 
I die while Jack pulls on his boat!" Jack 
heard of this, and his lungs became stronger 
than ever. Racking both his memory and his 
imagination for songs, for weeks all night long 
he sung, with his plaintive refrain, "Charlie 
dies while Jack pulls on his boat." A dis- 
tinguished poetess traveling at the West about 
this time was tarrying at the Lake House, 
and heard of the incident. She wrote for 
a New York magazine some beautiful lines 
appropriate to the last words of the child 
and the circumstances. These were repro- 
duced in our Chicago papers, but I have in 
vain sought to find them. Some of our old 
scrap-books undoubtedly contain them, and I 

120 



^o&n f©mttoortf> 



would like to be the instrument of their republi- 
cation. 

Old Jack went to church one Sunday, and 
the clergyman preached from the text, ' 'Who- 
soever shall be ashamed of me and my words, 
of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when 
he shall come in his own glory. ' ' After church 
was over, the clergyman took Jack to task for 
making so much noise on his ferry-boat, and 
told him he was going to have him removed. 
' ' You can't do it, ' ' said Jack. ' < Why not ? ' ' 
said the clergyman. "Your sermon, sir, your 
sermon! You said we must make a practical 
application of it." "How can you apply that 
to your position? ' ' "In this way, ' ' said Jack ; 
"the mayor appoints a ferryman. I will just 
tell him, he that is ashamed of me and my boat, 
of him will I be ashamed when I go to the 
polls on the day of election!" Jack was not 
removed. But he went one fall to the South 
with the robins; but unlike the robins, he 
returned no more. He probably saw the 
coming bridge. 

It was customary during the winter to give 
a series of dancing-parties at central points 
between here and Fox River, along the line of 
some of our main traveled roads, notices of 
which were generally given in newspapers. 
We used to have much more snow than 
we have now, and large sleigh-loads of 
people would be fitted out from the city, to 
meet young people from different parts of the 

121 



ftemmigcence£ of OBarip Chicago 

country. People in the country settlements were 
generally emigrants from the more cultivated 
portions of the East. United States Senator 
Silas Wright once told me that he could 
enumerate a hundred families, the very flower 
of the agricultural interest of St. Lawrence 
County, who had emigrated to west of Chicago. 
These settlers were not always poor; they were 
often men of large families who came here to 
obtain a large quantity of contiguous land, so 
as to settle their children around them. The 
custom at these parties was to leave Chicago 
about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, take supper 
on the way out, and engage breakfast for the 
morning, and after dancing all night, getting 
back to the city about 9 or 10 o'clock. The 
hotels in the country we frequently built of logs, 
but whether of logs or boards, were generally 
built in one style. Cooking-rooms, bar-room, 
sitting-rooms, were below, and above was one 
large hall, which could be used for religious 
services on Sunday or public meetings on* a 
weekday, and, by suspending blankets, could 
be divided into sleeping-rooms. Above was 
the attic, which could be used for storage when 
the hall was cleared, and also for dressing- 
rooms at parties. Ladies and gentlemen 
could more easily find their wearing apparel 
when suspended from nails driven into the 
beams of the building than they can now from 
the small dressing-rooms where the clothing is 
in constant danger of being mixed together. 
122 



^ofm f©enttoortf> 



I remember one of these occasions when the 
country residents had begun the dance before 
those from the city had reached there. Coun- 
try ladies were passing up and down the ladder 
to the dressing-room. But the city ladies 
would not ascend the ladder until it had been 
fenced around with blankets. There were 
always, on these occasions, mothers present 
from the country, who attended the young 
people to look after the care of their health, 
such as seeing that they were properly covered 
on their going home from a warm room, as 
physicians were very scarce in the country, and 
it was a great distance for many of them to 
send for medicines. These country matrons 
took it much to heart that the young ladies 
from the city were so particular in having the 
ladder fenced off, and were very free in the 
expression of their views on the subject to the 
elderly gentlemen present. During the even- 
ing a sleigh-load was driven up containing a 
French danseuse from Chicago, of considerable 
note in those days ; and it was not long after 
she entered the hall before the floor was cleared 
for her to have an opportunity to show her 
agility as a fancy dancer. When she began 
to swing around upon one foot, with the other 
extended, one of these country matrons, with 
a great deal of indignation, ran across the hall 
to her son, and said, "I don't think it is proper 
for our young folks to see any such perform- 
ance as this, and now you go right down and 
123 



fitmrm$ttntt$ of €arlp Chicago 

tell the landlord that we want some more 
blankets/* and the boy started before the last 
part of the sentence was heard, "and I'll have 
her fenced off by herself, as the city ladies did 
the ladder !" Her remarks were passed from 
one to another, and the company was loudly 
applauding them, when the applause was greatly 
increased by the entrance of the landlord with 
some blankets under his arm. The more the 
applause increased, the more animated became 
the danseuse, who took it all to herself. The 
fancy dance was finished, but the merriment 
had such an effect that one of our city young 
men took down the blankets around the ladder, 
and for the remainder of the evening the 
exposed ladder and the nimble French danseuse 
ceased to attract attention. 

I have thus made you a few selections from 
my large casket of reminiscences of the amuse- 
ments of early Chicago. But I give them as 
a mere appendix to my historical lecture, and 
do not wish them considered as any part of it, 
as I could have ended without them, and then 
have given you a lecture of ordinary length. 
If anyone thinks them inappropriate to this 
occasion, I wish to say that I respectfully con- 
cur in his views. If, however, they have 
served to compensate any of you for the tedium 
of the more historical portion of it, I will waive 
the question of their appropriateness, and ex- 
press my gratification at having them given. 



124 



[An Address delivered at the Reception to the Settlers 

of Chicago Prior to 1840, by the Calumet 

Club of Chicago, May 27, 1879.] 



I WAS gratified to receive an invitation to 
attend this union of the old settlers of 
Chicago, and still more gratified to find 
enclosed in the invitation a printed list of the 
others who had been invited. It is with pleas- 
ure also that I learn that since the list was 
printed, others, whose residence at that time 
were unknown, have been invited. I have 
long wanted such a list — a list of our living 
pioneers, a directory of our living historians. 
Men often call upon me to make inquiries con- 
cerning past events; and when I feel unable 
to give them correct answers, I try to think of 
some person now living who can. But it has 
been difficult to tell who were living, and, if 
living, where they lived. Now I have a direct- 
ory of the living. This list furnishes me with 
an index to the voluminous unwritten history 
of Chicago. There is scarcely an event in our 
early history with which some person whose 
name is here recorded is not associated. 
Every name I look at suggests some chapter in 
our history. I prefer to speak from this list, 
as the room is too crowded for me to recognize 
125 



Iflemimgcenceg of <£arip Chicago 

all, and yet there are many who are prevented 
by the various necessities of life from attend- 
ance. I feel safe in saying that all absent old 
settlers are with us in spirit, and will look with 
interest for our proceedings. I have tried to 
shake hands with all, and I have noticed no one 
yet whom I have not readily recognized. And 
all seemed to know me, and I think there is no 
one here who has not some time voted for me 
for some position, dependent upon his concur- 
rence with my views upon the measures of 
public policy then pending. 

When I first entered the room, I exclaimed, 
"History, Chicago's History \" and whilst I 
was remarking to some older settlers than my- 
self that I had lived in the state long enough 
to have shaken hands with all of our governors 
but three, I noticed in the crowd Colonel 
Gurdon S. Hubbard (who was here in 1818), 
who must have shaken hands with the other 
three. And now my eye catches a glimpse of 
Colonel Edmund D. Taylor, who has shaken 
hands with every governor Illinois ever had, 
state or territorial. I tell you, Mr. President, 
if I am to make a short speech, it is going to 
be dangerous to look around, and quite as 
dangerous to keep looking at this list. Chap- 
ter after chapter of our history is flitting across 
my mind so rapidly that my tongue cannot 
keep pace with my thoughts. Colonel Taylor 
must be the oldest Illinoisan in the room, if 
not in this part of the state. He came here 
126 



^ofjn i©ettttoortl> 



when Illinois was a territory in 1 8 14, contain- 
ing a population of about 12,000 people, and 
there were a few slaves then; and the capital 
was at Kaskaskia. He was elected to the 
House of Representatives from Sangamon 
County, August 2, 1830, when the capital was 
at Vandalia, and again, August 6, 1832. He 
was elected to the Senate August 4, 1834, and, 
after participating in our early canal legislation, 
he received a commission from General Andrew 
Jackson, as receiver of public moneys at 
Chicago. In him you see the man who sold, at 
the sale commencing June 15, 1835, the first 
acre of land for the United States Government 
in this region; and the very lot upon which we 
are now so agreeably enjoying ourselves was 
sold by him at $1.25 per acre, and his first sale 
amounted to nearly a half million of dollars. 
Our more recent settlers, who are accustomed 
to high-priced lands, will not think this much 
of a sale. But, when they consider the price, 
they will appreciate the magnitude of the sale, 
it being near 400,000 acres. So here, tonight, 
we have the first chapter in our land history. 
We can here begin at the section-corner. 
Colonel Taylor was born in old Virginia, and 
he has not changed his landed jurisdiction 
much; for he is tonight in what was once part 
of the state of his birth. And this reminds me 
that, not long since, some one wrote me in 
behalf of the Historical Society of Virginia, 
asking me the names of our prominent citizens 
127 



fteminigcmceg of €arip €i>icago 

who had emigrated from that state. My knowl- 
edge of birthplaces has not kept pace with 
our directory. So, in ignorance of the present, 
I referred him to the past, claiming that, if 
Chicago was colonized from any quarter, it 
must have been from old Virginia. I referred 
him to David McKee, whose name is upon this 
list. If not here tonight, two of his brothers- 
in-law are — Willard and Willis Scott. He was 
one of the very first men who were married in 
this city. He was married by the original 
settler, John Kinzie, January 23, 1827. He 
was the first blacksmith in our city, and carried 
our only mail once a month to and from Fort 
Wayne, Indiana. There was another Virginian, 
to whom I referred him, Archibald Caldwell, 
who kept the original Wolf Point Hotel, now 
living near Kershena, Wisconsin, whom I am 
sorry not to see here; but here is Willis Scott 
(not a Virginian), whose first wife was his sister. 
Benjamin Hall is a Virginian, whose second 
wife is a sister of our honored president tonight, 
Judge John Dean Caton. He is now living at 
Wheaton, Illinois, with a head full of early 
history. And our chaplain here tonight, Rev. 
Stephen R. Beggs, was born in Rockingham 
County, Virginia, March 30, 1801, the same 
month in which Thomas Jefferson was inau- 
gurated President. There may be other Vir- 
ginians living, but of the deceased my memory 
recalls James Kinzie, our first sheriff; his 
brother, William Kinzie ; Archibald Clybourne, 
128 



3?ol)n tteenttoortl) 



justice of the peace in 1 831; his father, James 
Clybourne, and his brother, Henry Clybourne; 
our early presiding elder, Rev. Jesse Walker; 
John K. Clarke, the celebrated hunter; David 
Hall; and Samuel, John and Jacob Miller. 

There is another man here tonight who 
revives in my mind, not only a great deal of 
our city's and our state's history, but of that 
of the entire Northwest. He was at Detroit 
when General Hull surrendered the American 
army in 18 12. All of you have read the par- 
ticulars of that surrender; but few of you ever 
heard of them from an eye-witness. And this 
may be the last occasion when any of you will 
be able to look upon a man who was present 
upon that occasion. So I speak to you of 
Mr. Mark Beaubien as a gentleman of unusual 
interest. It is over forty years since I heard 
his narrative, and also heard him sing a song 
in ridicule of the surrender, made by the 
inhabitants, which he sung in my office yester- 
day with the same vivacity with which he sung 
it before our city was incorporated. And he 
accompanied it with his fiddle — the same old 
fiddle. And who is there here tonight who 
has not heard that fiddle? How well it has 
been preserved we will show you after the 
refreshments have been finished. We are too 
old to dance upon an empty stomach. Among 
my pleasent recollections are those of frolics 
to the music of that fiddle, made up of Indians, 
half-breeds, Canadian French, and Americans. 
129 



&tmmi$tmtt$ of €arip Chicago 

And our Indians were no common Indians. 
They were chiefs with their families. The 
chiefs disliked to leave us. Long and long 
after their tribes departed, the chiefs remained; 
and, when they did go, many would revisit us. 
Who does not remember Chamblee (Shabonee) 
and Robinson (Che-che-pin-que), who died 
amongst us, and Billy Caldwell (Sauganash) 
who died September 28, 1 84 1, at Council 
Bluffs, Iowa, with his tribe — although pass- 
ing much of his time with us? I remember 
meeting, at Mr. Beaubien's, Sauganash and 
Shabonee. Mr. Beaubien told the story of 
the surrender of Detroit by General Hull, and 
its recapture by General Harrison. Then 
Sauganash and Shabonee gave an account of 
the battle of the Thames and the death of 
Tecumseh! When the Americans made the 
attack, Tecumseh, Sauganash and Shabonee 
were sitting upon a log in consultation. 
Shabonee was aide to Tecumseh, and Sauga- 
nash held a commission as captain in the 
British army under the name of Billy Caldwell. 
A wonderful man was this Billy Caldwell, and 
there are several in this room who have been 
upon hunting excursions with him. He owed 
allegiance to three governments without any 
renunciation. He was Captain Caldwell of 
the British army, Esquire Caldwell of the 
State of Illinois, and Sauganash, Chief of the 
Pottawatomies. He was appointed justice of 
the peace April 18, 1826, being the first 
130 



^ttfm t©enttoortf> 



appointment after Chicago was set off from 
Fulton County to Peoria. 

Many of us remember the part played by 
Mr. Beaubien and his fiddle at the marriage 
of the daughter of the Indian chief, Joseph 
Laframboise, to Thomas Watkins, a clerk in 
the post office, where I, for the first time, saw 
the original "war dance.' ' The company was 
made up, in about equal numbers, of Indians, 
half-breeds, Canadian French, and Americans. 
A few days thereafter, we remember that an 
elegant party, for those times, was given in 
honor of the newly married couple by a nephew 
of Mark Beaubien, and the fiddle came to the 
front again. His name was Medore B. 
Beaubien, and he was a member of the first 
board of trustees, elected in 1833, nearly a 
half-century ago. He is the earliest-elected 
officer of Chicago now living, and the bride of 
that occasion, now living, is his second wife. 
He is the business agent of the Pottawatomie 
Indians, and is the mayor of the city of 
Silver Lake, Kansas. His name is upon this 
list, as also is that of his partner in Chicago 
mercantile business in early times, Valentine 
A. Boyer. 

Our friend, Mark Beaubien, erected the first 
hotel upon the South Side, and named it after 
his friend, Sauganash; and it was there I took 
my dinner upon the first day of my arrival 
here, October 25, 1836. Near this hotel; he 
established the first ferry across the Chicago 
131 



Jftemmtgcmceg of <£arip Chicago 

River. At his house, the first election for 
trustees was held on August 10, 1833. Some 
one may ask if I wish it understood that the 
whole population was running after Mark 
Beaubien and his fiddle in those days. The 
facts would be otherwise, if I did. For here 
were Philo Carpenter, Grant Goodrich, both 
now present (to say nothing of the many noble 
dead), who were organizing Bible societies, 
temperance societies, home and foreign mis- 
sionary societies, and otherwise sowing the seed 
which has made our city the most reverential 
and moral city of its size in the world — the 
City of Churches — the city where ambitious 
and destitute congregations send for their best 
preachers, and from which vacant dioceses 
select their best bishops. I was much interested 
in a recent lecture upon early Methodism in 
Chicago, delivered by Grant Goodrich. It is 
often said the good die young. The gray hairs 
and bald heads in this assemblage contradict 
the assertion. The old settlers of Chicago are 
passing their threescore years and ten, and are 
still invoking Providence to point out to them 
paths of usefulness. 

I see Willis Scott here, who had to go to 
Peoria in 1830 for his marriage license. There 
are several persons here who were here when 
the first steamboat arrived to bring General 
Scott and his troops for the Black Hawk War. 
Here is Judge R. N. Murray, who was one of 
General Scott's soldiers, and marched under 
132 



^ofjn f©enttoortf> 



him to the Rock River Valley. There are 
persons here who have lived in Fulton County, 
Peoria County, and Cook County, and never 
changed their residence. If John Watkins is 
not here, he ought to be, for he taught our 
first district school and was the first clerk of 
our first school district, and is living near 
Joliet. Philo Carpenter and Grant Goodrich 
were upon the excutive committee of our first 
Bible society, formed in 1835, and it would be 
difficult to name any good cause in which they 
and Tuthill King were not engaged. Deacon 
Carpenter was the master spirit in forming the 
first anti-slavery society, and knew better than 
any other man the safest, if not the shortest, 
route from Chicago to Canada. There are 
several attorneys here who were in active prac- 
tice before our city was organized, and both 
the members of the firm of Goodrich & 
Fullerton yet live here. And here is J. Young 
Scammon, who published the second volume 
of the Illinois Supreme Court reports, and now 
we are upon our ninetieth volume. If our 
state had adopted the plan of most states and 
only published one volume each year, he would 
be much over one hundred years of age by this 
time. And here is ex-Chief Justice John Dean 
Caton, whose opinions have helped make up 
those reports. And here are the names of 
Joseph N. Balestier, Isaac N. Arnold, Andrew 
J. Brown, Henry W. Clarke, Hugh T. Dickey, 
Grant Goodrich, James Grant, Thomas Hoyne, 

133 



JSemimgcenceg of €arip Chicago 

Alonzo Huntington, Buckner S. Morris, Mah- 
lon D. Ogden, Mark Skinner, and Wm. B. 
Snowhook. Here are physicians who were 
here before our city was organized: Dr. D. S. 
Smith, Dr. L. D. Boone (since mayor), and 
Dr. John W. Eldridge, who was, in 1840, 
elected one of the presidential electors who 
cast the vote of this state for Martin Van 
Buren. He was one of the first men to 
appreciate me. For he went to a Democratic 
congressional convention in the winter of 
1837-8 and voted for me when I was constitu- 
tionally ineligible, being but twenty-two years 
of age. Stephen A. Douglas secured the 
nomination; and the man who introduced me to 
him, Isaac Cook, who kept, at his " Eagle, " the 
most fashionable resort for Illinois politicians, 
is with us tonight. And here are a dozen men 
who heard the first public discussion ever held 
in this city, that between Stephen A. Douglas 
and his successful competitor, John T. Stuart, 
of Springfield, the only man now living, of either 
branch of Congress, who entered Congress 
from Illinois before I did. Dr. Eldridge, 
however, got his man in 1843, and Douglas 
also had to wait until I went with him. Our 
first medical college was chartered in 1837, 
and here tonight are three of the original 
trustees, Grant Goodrich, Edmund D. Taylor, 
and John D. Caton. How many old merchants 
are there here tonight on this list? Philo 
Carpenter, Tuthill King, Devotion C. Eddy, 
134 



«fofm fteenttoortf) 



Mathew S. Molony, Horatio G. Loomis, Wm. 
H. Adams, Wm. Osborn, Gurdon S. Hubbard, 
J. Milo Strail, Eli B. Williams, Oren Sherman, 
E. S. Wadsworth, W. H. Taylor, Edwin Black- 
man, V. A. Boyer, James E. Bishop, Samuel J. 
Surdam, Edmund D. Taylor, Stephen F. Gale, 
M. L. Satterlee, Ed. K. Rodgers, Sidney 
Sawyer, M. B. Beaubien, Walter Kimball, 
Jabez K. Botsford, Joel C. Walter, George 
Chacksfield, Benj. W. Raymond, T. B. Carter, 
and others. Colonel Hubbard, in 183 5 , adver- 
tised that a schooner had just arrived, bringing 
him fresh goods only twenty days from New 
York. And here is Arthur G. Burley, the 
oldest continuous merchant in our city. I 
found him a clerk in the store of John Holbrook 
when I came here. He was in business in 
1838, and I still buy my crockery of him. He 
was burned out in 1839, as well as in 1 87 1, 
going into the fire like the salamander and 
coming out like the phcenix. 

This list furnishes index to the whole history 
of our fire department. Late in 1835, Colonel 
Gurdon S. Hubbard engaged our first hand 
engine in New York, but not in time for it 
to reach Chicago that year. Captain John M. 
Turner was the first foreman of Hook and 
Ladder Company No. 1, and was promoted 
from that place to be our first chief engineer, 
March II, 1837, the oldest now living; and 
here are the names of some of his successors : 
Alanson S. Sherman, Luther Nichols, and 
135 



Mtmmi$tmtt$ of €arip Chicago 

Stephen F. Gale. We have here tonight eight 
members of the original fire company organized 
in 1835, viz.: Jabez K. Botsford, Isaac Cook, 
Silas B. Cobb, Charles Cleaver, John L. 
Wilson, Wm. H. Taylor, Grant Goodrich, and 
Tuthill King. Would you not like to see them 
running with the machine now? The fire 
company held its meetings in the Presbyterian 
church, for whose dimensions, as compared 
with our present engine-house, I refer you to 
Deacon Benjamin W. Raymond. Our early 
clergymen are well represented on this list also. 
Besides our venerable chaplain, who tells us he 
was here in 1 831, I see the name of Reverend 
Jeremiah Porter, who was here in 1834, and of 
Luke Hitchcock and Flavel Bascom who came 
after. There were no baptismal fonts in those 
days. But, purer than old Jordan ever was, 
the Chicago River was good enough for 
immersion. I remember upon one cold day 
early in February, 1839, seeing seventeen 
immersed, and Chicago's honored architect, 
present here tonight, John M. Van Osdel, was 
one of them. 

This list shows that our early surveyors are 
nearly all living. Here is the name of Amos 
Bailey, who was county surveyor before our 
city was organized; and of Asa F. Bradley, 
his successor, who held the office until 1849; 
and James H. Rees, our first city surveyor, 
and here by my side sits Alex. Wolcott, our 
present and long-time surveyor, elected in 1855, 
136 



^Polm t©enttoorrt) 



a settler of 1834, who has waded every marsh 
in our county; and, whilst sitting in his office, 
can describe the precise spot where we can 
find any section-corner. And here also is the 
name of E. B. Talcott, who was town surveyor 
under the government of the Trustees. Here 
is the name of Augustine D. Taylor, who saw 
the first printing-press landed at our Chicago 
Harbor, in 1 83 3; and here is Walter Kimball, 
who was in the office when the first newspaper, 
The Chicago Democrat, was struck off, Novem- 
ber 26, 1833. 

Too late for him to attend, an invitation 
was sent to Captain Morgan L. Shapley, at 
Meridian, Texas, who was employed at Buffalo 
in June, 1833, to come here and assist at the 
commencement of the works at our harbor. 
A. V. Knickerbocker should be here, son of 
the first clerk of the harbor works, who con- 
tinued in that capacity many years. And here 
is C. B. Dodson, one of the first contractors. 
Lieutenant A. A. Humphreys, now general, 
and chief of engineers at Washington city, who 
took charge of the harbor works as early as 
1838, could give us some very pleasant reminis- 
cences of early Chicago, and so could Colonel 
Jesse H. Leavenworth, who succeeded him. 
I do not find the name of Jefferson Davis upon 
this list, nor see him present. But he was 
engaged in the survey of Lake Michigan about 
1832, and I was surprised to learn, upon my 
first acquaintance with him, how many of our 
137 



3Semmi£cence£ of <£arfp Chicago 

early settlers he knew and how kindly he spoke 
of them. He contended that Calumet, instead 
of Chicago, should have been the city. 

You have the whole history of our canal 
here. Besides Colonel Edmund D. Taylor and 
Colonel Gurdon S. Hubbard, who participated 
in the early canal legislation, you should remem- 
ber that one of the first board of canal trustees 
is present in the person of Colonel Hubbard 
himself, who was elected representative from 
Vermillion County, in this state, August 6, 
1832. And here is E. B.Talcott, one of the 
first engineers. There was a grand celebration 
hereupon the fourth of July, 1836, and the people 
all went to Bridgeport to see Colonel W. B. 
Archer (for whom Archer Avenue is named), 
as acting commissioner, take out the first 
shovelful of earth; and two of the marshals, 
Walter Kimball and Edmund D. Taylor, are 
now present. And there are a great many of 
the original canal contractors here present, and 
others are upon this list. Now we are in the 
habit of considering contractors a sort of busi- 
ness tramps, making their homes wherever they 
overtake a job. But not so with our contract- 
ors. Representing in Congress the entire 
canal line from Chicago to LaSalle, I think I 
had a personal acquaintance with all of them. 
With a little reflection, I think I could point 
out the job of each man. And how few ever 
left our state. They mostly remained among 
us and have ranked among our leading citizens; 
138 



^ofm i©enttoortf> 



one governor, several mayors, senators, repre- 
sentatives, taking an active part in developing 
our resources and in advancing our moral and 
educational interests. They were a very far- 
seeing body of men also. Do you not suppose 
that George Armour had his great elevator in 
view when he was digging the canal ? Here is 
General Hart L. Stewart, who knew if he took a 
boy for the canal's first congressman, he would 
finally grow to it! He was vice-president of 
the congressional convention which assembled 
at Joliet, May 1 8, 1843, over thirty-five years 
ago, our deceased lieutenant-governor, John 
Moore, being president. And while upon the 
subject, let me remark that here is W. T. 
Burgess, one of the secretaries, and also upon 
this list Hugh T. Dickey, the other, and also 
Colonel W. B. Snowhook, Henry W. Clarke, 
Colonel Julius M. Warren, and Judge R. N. 
Murray, who were delegates. If my twelve 
years in Congress were of any service, you can 
thank these men who helped set the ball in 
motion. 

I see the president of one of the old boards 
of town trustees, Eli B. Williams, and one 
of his colleagues, Asahel Pierce, here, and in 
justice to that board it should be said that it 
was wound up without owing a dollar. And 
that is the way that every corporation should 
wind up. But we have had scarcely another 
wound up in the same way. I do not see 
Nelson R. Norton present, who built our first 
139 



MtmM$tmtt$ of <£arlp Chicago 

drawbridge, upon Dearborn Street, in 1834; 
and the old steamer Michigan, Captain Chelsey 
Blake, was the first to pass through it. He 
also built, in 1835, the sloop Clarissa, the first 
sail vessel launched on Lake Michigan. He 
resides at Alden, Minnesota. He was the Whig 
candidate for alderman from the old sixth ward 
at our first charter election, and is the only- 
man upon that ticket now living. 

If you ask what were the principal entertain- 
ments in those days, I would answer: The 
meetings of the debating society, in which 
all citizens took an interest. Colonel Hans 
Crocker, now living at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 
was the first secretary, in 1 83 5 . In that year, one 
of the questions was: "Are the frequent Indian 
disturbances owing to the clemency extended 
to the Indians by the general government?' ' 
Grant Goodrich, now present, led the debate in 
the negative, and I think he would do so again 
if the debate should be opened. As this ques- 
tion has never been settled, and as the man who 
led the debate in the affirmative is not living, I 
will appoint Major-General Philip H. Sheridan 
to take his place . We had occasional theatrical 
performances. My earliest recollection in this 
respect runs back to the time when Joseph 
Jefferson, who has gained such a reputation as 
Rip Van Winkle, made his appearance at about 
ten years of age. Little did we then think that 
the lad that we were applauding as a matter of 
encouragement was to receive upon his merits 
140 



3W>n i©enttoortf> 



the applause of the nation. When I hear of 
Joe Jefferson's fame, I cannot forget that it was 
Chicago people who gave him his first "send- 
off." There are many persons here present 
who remember when the Indian tribes all 
through the Northwest assembled at Chicago 
to receive their annuities. And still more 
remember when the Indians were finally re- 
moved from all this region of country, and our 
Fort Dearborn was abandoned by the national 
troops. 

There are many persons here tonight who 
attended the first meeting called to take into 
consideration the provisions of our city charter, 
on the evening of January 23, 1837. All went 
pleasant until we came to the limitation upon 
our city debt. Hon. Henry Brown, the his- 
torian, the name of whose son, Andrew Jackson 
Brown, is upon the list, in the advocacy of a 
liberal policy, contended that the child was 
then living who would see fifty thousand people 
here. A gentleman, whose name I afterward 
learned was Walter L. Newberry, was very 
active in opposing the debt policy; and, when 
the negative vote was called for, he seized me 
by the coat-collar, as I was sitting, and said, 
"Stand up, young man." I responded that I 
was not a voter. He asked, ' ' Don't you intend 
to live here, and don't you expect to get rich?" 
I admitted that I did. He gave my collar an 
extra pull, and said, "Well then, stand up! 
Give these men the power, and they will abuse 
141 



Hemin#cence£ of <£arip Chicago 

it, until they bankrupt us!" And up I stood, 
and I have been thus standing on similar votes 
and occasions ever since. Ever after upon 
all matters of taxation, Mr. Newberry and I 
acted together. I became associated with him 
in banking, in railroading, in the board of edu- 
cation, and in many other capacities, and found 
him an inveterate foe to the generally received 
doctrine that a man's moral responsibility was 
any less for his public and corporate action 
than for his individual action. He believed in 
saving as well as in earning, and was one of 
the very few, if not the only one, of our reputed 
millionaires, who proved to be such after his 
death. His farewell words to me were of the 
same meaning as his first: "Keep up the 
fight!" 

Our first mayor, Wm. B. Ogden, is dead; 
but upon this list is the name of our first city 
clerk, Isaac N. Arnold; and you all see the 
city clerk under our fourth mayor, Thomas 
Hoyne. And the publisher of the first cor- 
poration newspaper is now addressing you. 
Here are two of the members of our first board 
of aldermen, John Dean Caton, of the third, 
and Asahel Pierce, of the fourth ward, these 
two wards then embracing the whole West 
Side. In Judge Caton's ward there were but 
38 votes; and in Mr. Pierce's 59, making only 
97 votes on the entire West Side. There were 
only 709 votes in the entire city. The house 
where the first election in the fourth ward was 
142 



^Tofm fEenttoortf) 



held, then known as the Green Tree Hotel, 
afterward the Chicago Hotel, just west of the 
Lake Street bridge, northeast corner of North 
Canal Street, is the oldest building in our city. 
It was, at one time, the best place for public 
meetings and parties on that side of the river. 

The name of the second mayor, Buckner S. 
Morris, is upon the list. But Edward H. 
Hadduck and Eli B. Williams, of the first ward, 
and Grant Goodrich of the sixth, who were 
upon his board of aldermen, are present. Mr. 
Hadduck was one of the judges of election of 
the first ward at our first municipal election, 
the year before, and is the only one of the 
judges at that time now living. I was chal- 
lenged because I was a boy, and Mr. Edward 
H. Hadduck administered the oath. Strange 
as it may seem, the same charge of being under 
age met me again when I first ran for Congress, 
and I suppose I was the youngest man in Con- 
gress when first elected. I did not begin to 
fill up, although as tall as I am now, until 
about 35 years of age; and my whiskers were 
so late in coming, and so many persons were 
going into the business, that I never cultivated 
the crop. 

Our third, who was also our sixth mayor, 
Benjamin W. Raymond, is here tonight with 
both his aldermen from the third ward, in 1839, 
Ira Miltimore* and William H. Stow; and also 
Charles McDonnell, of the second, and Alanson 

*Died June 10, 1879. 

143 



ftmumgcmceg of <£arlp Cfticaso 

S. Sherman, of the third ward, in 1842; and 
this is the same Sherman who was mayor in 
1844. Here are the names of Julius Wads- 
worth, of the first ward, and John Gage, of the 
third ward, in 1 840, and here is the name of 
John Davlin, of the first ward, and I see present 
Chas. Follansbee, of the first, and Peter 
Page of the second, of the board of 1 84 1. 
Here is the name of Hugh T. Dickey, 
alderman of the first, in 1843. Here is 
Elihu Granger, one of the aldermen from the 
fifth ward, in 1 844. Here are J. Young 
Scammon, of the first, in 1845, Levi D. Boone, 
and Wm. M. Larrabee, of the sixth, in 1846, 
Robert H. Foss, of the fourth, William B. 
Snowhook and James Lane, of the ninth, in 
1847, John C. Haines, of the fifth, in 1848, 
afterward mayor, William H. Adams, of the 
third, and Amos G. Throop of the fourth, in 

1849, and Isaac L. Milliken, of the second, in 

1850. I will carry the details no farther. I 
wanted to show you, in the destruction of so 
many records, how much of personal memory 
there is to substitute for them. Although the 
mayors prior to and including 1 850 are all dead 
but three, we have here some member of every 
board covering that period, and there are a 
large number, about thirty here, who have been 
aldermen since. And Alderman Throop, of 
the board of 1849, is m tne Council now. And 
here is Amos Grannis, an old settler, his col- 
league, of the present year, from the fourth 

144 



^Foftn i©mttoottf> 



ward; it seems that Young America yet has 
some appreciation of the old settlers. I will 
add, however, that we have seven other mayors 
here on this list of old settlers, Walter S. 
Gurnee, Charles M. Gray, Isaac L. Milliken, 
Levi D. Boone, John C. Haines, Julien S. 
Rumsey, and myself. I notice in this room 
five of our sheriffs, Isaac Cook, William L. 
Church, John L. Wilson, Timothy M. Bradley, 
and John Gray. Also we have three post- 
masters, Hart L. Stewart, Isaac Cook, and 
Samuel Hoard; four state senators, Edmund 
D. Taylor, Samuel Hoard, Henry W. Blodgett, 
and John C. Haines; one speaker of the House 
of Representatives, Elijah M. Haines; and six 
members of the House, Isaac N. Arnold, 
Thomas Drummond, Augustus H. Burley, J. 
Young Scammon, Mark Skinner, and Hart L. 
Stewart. Three judges of probate are here, 
Walter Kimball, Mahlon D. Ogden, and Thomas 
Hoyne. Two members of Congress are here, 
Isaac N. Arnold, four years, under Abraham 
Lincoln; and myself, twelve years, at differ- 
ent periods, commencing with John Tyler 
and ending with Andrew Johnson. Were it 
appropriate, I could give some very early 
history, having served with men who were born 
before the American Revolution, and with one, 
John Quincy Adams, who heard the guns at 
the battle of Lexington. Sufficit to say, that 
I have represented twenty-two counties running 
east to the Indiana state line, west to the 

145 



Mmimi$tmtt$ of €arlp Chicago 

Mississippi River, north to the Wisconsin state 
line, and south to the Quincy, Springfield, and 
Wabash districts. It takes twelve men to 
represent that territory now. 

Here I see William Lock, S.J. Surdam, and 
James A. Marshall, members of the first 
Masonic lodge ever organized in Chicago, and 
the eighteenth in the State, old "LaFayette," 
with Carding Jackson, master; and here are 
members of the first Odd Fellows lodge also, 
and the ninth in the state, " Union, " A. G. Bur- 
ley, S. B. Walker, E. W. Densmore, Jerome 
Beecher, D. Horton, and H. H. Husted. 

Here are two members of the first board of 
water commissioners, H. G. Loomis, and A. S. 
Sherman; and one member of the first board 
of sewerage commissioners, Sylvester Lind. 

Two United States district attorneys, Thomas 
Hoyneand Mark Skinner, are here. Two state's 
attorneys are here, James Grant and Alonzo 
Huntington. In 1840, July 10th, John Stone 
was hung. Mr. Huntington prosecuted, at 
the trial, and here is Robinson Tripp, who, 
with myself, was upon the jury. But, prior 
to that, in 1835, there was another murderer, 
Joseph F. Norris, who took a change of venue 
to the nearest county, then Iroquois, where he 
was convicted and hung, June 10th, 1836, from 
the limb of a tree. James Grant, now present, 
was the prosecutor, and the late Henry Moore, 
with whom I commenced the study of law in 
this city, defended him. I need not tell you 
146 



^FoJm f^ettttoortf) 



that we have one Supreme Court judge here, 
John Dean Caton. And then we have here, 
or upon this list, three Circuit Court judges, 
or judges under different names with equiv- 
alent jurisdiction — Hugh T. Dickey, Buckner 
S. Morris, and Mark Skinner. One United 
States district judge, Henry W. Blodgett, is 
here. And who does not know that that vet- 
eran in jurisprudence, our United States circuit 
judge, Thomas Drummond, is here, his original 
commission bearing the signature of "Old 
Rough and Ready/' General Zachary Taylor? 
And this suggests, what a museum of com- 
missions we could establish here tonight, and full 
of all sorts of historical reminiscences. Col- 
onel E. D. Taylor would bring forward his 
commission from General Andrew Jackson, as 
receiver of public moneys. And Ed H. Had- 
duck his commission for the same office from 
General W. H. Harrison. Jackson, Harrison, 
Taylor! What suggestive names! And then 
our United States district judge, Henry W. 
Blodgett, present tonight, could bring forward 
his commission from the more recent General 
Ulysses S. Grant. And Mark Skinner could 
bring his as United States district attorney; and 
Eli B. Williams, as register of the Chicago 
land-office from John Tyler; and Hart L. 
Stewart, as postmaster, from James K. Polk; 
and Wm. B. Snowhook, as collector of the 
port, from Franklin Pierce; and Isaac Cook, 
as postmaster, from James Buchanan; and 

147 



Mtmmi$tmtt$ of €arlp Chicago 

Samuel Hoard, as postmaster, from Abraham 
Lincoln. The appointees of President Van 
Buren, and Acting President Millard Filmore 
are numbered with the dead. Acting President 
Andrew Johnson knew not the old settlers, and 
President Rutherford B. Hayes has not recog- 
nized us as yet. If he wants his name in such 
a museum there is still an opportunity. 

I should have stated that the first collector 
of our port is here, Colonel William B. Snow- 
hook. And here is the history of the first 
railroad built from Chicago, from its organ- 
ization to its final * 'gobbling up." I see my 
colleagues, Benj. W. Raymond, Silas B. Cobb, 
and Edward K. Rodgers, here. And here are 
the names of William M. Larrabee, our secre- 
tary, and Edward B. Talcott, our superintend- 
ent. The modern railroad men change our 
name from ''old settlers'' to "old fogies," as 
we paid our debts and never omitted a dividend. 
We paid our president $1000, and I audited 
the accounts for the love of it. 

The first bank was started here in 1835, the 
Chicago branch of the Illinois State Bank, and 
here I see three of its original directors, Gurdon 
S. Hubbard, Edmund D. Taylor, and Walter 
Kimball. And here is also Ezra L. Sherman, 
the teller. 

Our school boards are well represented here, 

although I see no one here whose appointment 

bears date prior to mine, in 1838. Isaac N. 

Arnold is still in the board, and here are also 

148 



^fofm l©enifcDortf) 



Edwin Blackman, Charles N. Holden, Philo 
Carpenter, Samuel Hoard, and Mark Skinner, 
once of the board. 

Who does not remember the old auction- 
house of Garret, Brown & Company, where 
the mellifluous voice of the late mayor, Augustus 
Garret, was heard every evening in selling lots 
all over the Northwest. Here is the name of 
Nathaniel J. Brown, of that firm, if anyone 
wants to know the extent of the town-lot bus- 
iness in those days. 

If any of you wish information of wars, I 
would say that here are men whose experience 
leads them to the War of 1 8 12, Black Hawk 
War, and several other Indian wars, and the 
Mexican War, as well as the War of the Rebel- 
lion. The Mexican War is considered a small 
affair as compared with the latter; but its 
importance will be highly appreciated when we 
consider that it gave us our Pacific possessions, 
and that the Pacific Railroad was its legitimate 
consequence. 

I notice among those who have given us 
this splendid entertainment several young men, 
and it is but natural that they should inquire 
if we had no society men in those days. Our 
early settlers were generally society men, but 
they never let society interfere with their bus- 
iness. If our accomplishments have not already 
been demonstrated, perhaps we can make a 
more pleasing demonstration, when to the tunes 
of Mr. Beaubien's fiddle, that same old fiddle, 
149 



JSemimgcenceg of <£arfp Chicago 

we shall ask you to join in the dance of your 
parents and grandparents. Oh! that that fiddle 
could speak! How many pleasant memories 
would it revive. I notice a gentleman here 
who was a model of a society man. He was 
at his place of business promptly every day 
and at parties every night. After sunset he 
would go farther to attend a party, dance 
longer, and be back at his place of business 
earlier the next morning than any man in the 
city. He has lived in pleasure and to profit. 
He brought nothing here ; his notes never went 
to protest, and now he has nearly means enough 
to pay the debts of almost all our modern society 
men. If the society men of these days would 
but follow his example, work as well as play, 
save as well as earn (to use a granger phrase), 
they would find a great deal more corn on their 
Cobb. I notice also here the ever pleasant 
countenance of our old-time master of ceremo- 
nies, the Lord Chesterfield of the frontier. 
When DuPage County was created from Cook, 
our people did not object to losing the territory, 
but they solemnly protested against setting off 
Colonel Julius M. Warren. But when the new 
county elected him to the legislature, Chicago 
found it had an additional member. Every 
hotel-keeper within a radius of fifty miles would 
give at least one party during the year and as no 
party could be a success without Colonel Warren, 
he always had the naming of the days, and 
when his name was printed upon the invitations 
150 



^Pofm i©enttoortf> 



as manager, no weather could prevent a crowd. 
Nor must I forget James A. Marshall, who is 
in our midst, the great innovator upon old- 
fashioned dances. He introduced the quadrille, 
and those who were too old to learn, objected to 
coming to a frolic and then having to sit still 
while the quadrille was danced. The matter 
was compromised at first by having quadrilles 
while supper was being eaten, thus making 
Mr. Marshall and his followers eat at the second 
table. Mr. Beaubien soon found out that he 
could call quadrille changes while fiddling, and 
whoever went into his hotel by day could hear 
him practicing, calling out, "Balance all," 
"Forward two," "Cross over," "Chasse," 
"Dos-a-dos," etc., until the Indians, half- 
breeds, servant girls, stage drivers, barkeepers, 
and all his guests, were well posted. Then 
our friend Marshall stirred up a furious tempest 
by introducing the waltz. Most parents dis- 
approved of it, their daughters rather liked it, 
but the clergymen opened a tremendous battery 
upon it. Previously they had not objected to 
the attendance of members of their church. 
Sometimes, they would even permit their 
daughters to attend our parties and would 
come themselves to accompany them home. 
And they would come early. For they liked 
our suppers. 

Gentlemen, in my zeal I have forgotten the 
length of time I have been talking. Nothing 
is so near my heart as the restoration and per- 
151 



&tmmx$tmtt$ of <£arlp Chicago 

petuation of our history destroyed by the fire. 
I want to re-establish the old landmarks, and 
here is the material to do it with. There never 
will be so many old settlers together again. I 
look upon this list as an index to our history. 
I see different and interesting chapters in every 
countenance. Let each one write out what he 
remembers and leave it with his friends, or 
what is better, with the Historical Society; 
being as particular as possible as to dates. 

You called upon me for a speech, but I 
have preferred to inaugurate a class in early 
history. Here, in this list of invited guests, is 
my roll of scholars. I have prepared blank 
text-books, and named a few chapter headings, 
under which you can write your experience or 
add other chapter headings, and write under 
them as your experience may best dictate or 
your memory best serve you. And, if you 
but do what you are able to do in this respect 
posterity will be under obligations to The 
Calumet Club of Chicago for bringing us to- 
gether tonight, as profound and many times 
more lasting than even we are under for its 
unparalleled hospitality. 



152 



9Jo^n 5£ean Caton 

[An Address delivered at the Reception to the Settlers 

of Chicago Prior to 1840, by the Calumet 

Club of Chicago, May 27, 1879.] 



THE pleasing duty has been assigned me 
by my associates of years gone by of 
expressing our feelings toward you for 
your kind words and generous hospitality. It 
is a task I feel quite unable to perform. Words 
are wanting which will adequately express the 
sensibilities which are awakened in the bosom of 
each one of us, whom your generous forethought 
has brought together here; who, forty years or 
more ago, made the little hamlet of Chicago their 
home, and devoted their energies to laying the 
foundations of this great city. It is gratifying 
to us to know that, as we are passing down the 
road that ends where we cannot see, those who 
are rising up to take our places in the labors 
of life feel kindly toward us, and appreciate 
what we have done, or at least attempted to 
do. As I look about me and see gathered here 
friends of so many years ago, I am transported 
back to the time when we were all young. 
Even then there were old men here, at least 
so they seemed to us, among whom I may 
recall Colonel Jean Baptiste Beaubien, Dr. 
Elijah D. Harmon, and John Wright. They 
153 



Jlemmigcenceg of €arip Chicago 

have long since passed away, but their names 
should never be forgotten. The old men called 
us boys then, with more mainspring than reg- 
ulator, but we thought we were well-balanced 
men. You call us old men now, but we feel 
somewhat boyish still. It is a pleasant retro- 
spect to go back in memory forty years — let 
me go back forty-six years, when I here set 
my stake and commenced the business of life. 
There were then not two hundred people here. 
I was an old resident of six weeks' standing 
before two hundred and fifty inhabitants could 
be counted to authorize a village incorporation 
under the general laws of the state. Colonel 
Beaubien presided at that meeting, and at his 
request I sat beside him as a prompter, for 
official honors and responsibilities were new 
to him. 

When we had attained the dignity of a 
village corporation, with the wild waters of 
the lake on the one hand, and the broad and 
brilliant prairie, still untouched by the hus- 
bandman's plowshare, on the other, we thought 
we were a great people, and even then, though 
feebly, discounted the future of Chicago. Of 
those who were present at that memorable 
birth, I rejoice to see many here present. How 
can I express our feelings of gratitude to that 
Divine Hand which has so long sustained us, 
and bounteously lengthened out our days, and 
again brought us together, under conditions of 
so much happiness and in the enjoyment of so 
154 



Stofm SDean €aton 



goodly a measure of health? I think I can 
count twenty, at least, who were here forty- 
six years ago, when Chicago had no streets 
except on paper; when the wild grass grew 
and the wild flowers bloomed where the court 
house square was located; when the pine woods 
bordered the lake north of the river, and the 
east sides of both branches of the river were 
clothed with dense shrubbery forests to within 
a few hundred feet of their junction. Then 
the wolves stole from these covers by night, 
and prowled through the hamlet, hunting for 
garbage around the back doors of our cabins. 
Late in 1833, a bear was reported in the skirt 
of timber along the South Branch, when George 
White's loud voice and bell — he was as black 
as night in a cavern, and his voice had the 
volume of a fog horn, and he was recognized 
as the town crier — summoned all to the chase. 
All the curs and hounds, of high and low degree, 
were mustered, with abundance of firearms of 
the best quality in the hands of those who 
knew well how to use them. Soon bruin was 
treed and despatched, very near to where the 
Rock Island depot now stands. Then was the 
time when we chased the wolf over the prairies, 
now within the city limits, and I know some 
here were of the party who pursued one right 
through the little hamlet and onto the floating 
ice near old Fort Dearborn. Oh, those were 
glorious times, when warm blood flowed rapidly, 
no matter how low stood the mercury. Then in 

155 



Htmmx$tmtt$ of <£arip Chicago 

winter the Chicago River was our skating rink 
and our race course. Let me ask John Bates 
over there if he remembers when we skated 
together up to Hard Scrabble — where Bridge- 
port now is — and he explained to me, by 
pantomime alone, how the Indians caught musk- 
rats under the ice. And let me ask Silas B. 
Cobb if he remembers the trick Mark Beaubien 
played on Robert A. Kinzie to win the race 
on the ice that winter. See now how Mark's 
eye flashes fire and he trembles in every fibre 
at the bare remembrance of that wild excite- 
ment. This was the way he did it. He and 
Kinzie each had a very fast pony, one a pacer 
and the other a trotter. Mark had trained his 
not to break when he uttered the most unearthly 
screams and yells which he could pour forth, 
and that is saying much in that direction, for 
he could beat any Pottawatomie I ever heard, 
except Gurdon S. Hubbard and John S. C. 
Hogan. The day was bright and cold. The 
glittering ice was smooth as glass, the atmos- 
phere pure and bracing. The start was about 
a mile up the South Branch. Down came the 
trotter and the pacer like a whirlwind, neck 
and neck, till they approached Wolf Point, or 
the junction, when Kinzie's pony began to 
draw ahead of the little pacer, and bets were 
two to one on the trotting nag as he settled a 
little nearer to the ice and stretched his head 
and neck further out, as if determined to win 
if but by a throat-latch. It was at this supreme 
156 



^ofjtt 2Dean €aton 



moment that Mark's tactics won the day. He 
sprang to his feet in his plank-built pung, his 
tall form towering above all surroundings, 
threw high in the air his wolfskin cap, fran- 
tically swung around his head his buffalo robe, 
and screamed forth such unearthly yells as no 
human voice ever excelled, broken up into a 
thousand accents by a rapid clapping of the 
mouth with the hand. To this the pony was 
well trained, and it but served to bring out the 
last inch of speed that was in him, while the 
trotter was frightened out of his wits, no doubt 
thinking that a whole tribe of Indians were 
after him, and he broke into a furious run, 
which carried him far beyond the goal before 
he could be brought down. Hard words were 
uttered then, which it would not do to repeat 
in a well-conducted Sunday school, but the 
winner laughed and fobed the stakes with a 
heartiness and zest which Mark alone could 
manifest. 

There is an inspiration in the memory of 
those glorious days of fun and frolic which 
quickens the pulse to full youthful vigor, and 
now to see so many of those around me who 
were the life and soul of those hilarious times, 
transports me back to them, and makes me feel 
as if no long years of toil had rolled along since 
then. We forget for the moment the inter- 
vening time and remember only the broad, 
unbroken prairie, which then extended for miles 
around the spot where this hall stands. But 
157 



jSeminigcenceg of <£arip Chicago 

you must not think that all our time was spent 
in fun and frolic. Our sports were but epi- 
sodes, while our days and nights were spent 
in labors inspired and sustained by vigorous 
health, indomitable will, and a full appreciation 
of the lifelong task before us. We felt and 
knew that wisdom and energy and industry 
could alone build up such a city as its geo- 
graphical position seemed to require. The 
spirit manifested by those who commenced the 
work would be likely to make its impress upon 
the teeming throngs which were already hasten- 
ing to join us from the East and the South, 
and the wonderful work wrought by those who 
joined and came after us, and which have just 
been so truthfully and so eloquently described, 
we flatter ourselves were in part at least the 
folio wings of what we began. 

To us of the olden time, who, as your guests, 
feel ourselves so much honored, contrasts are 
continually presenting themselves. Then and 
now ever present themselves side by side. 
Here I commenced my judicial career, at the 
age of twenty-two, as a justice of the peace. 
On the 14th of July, 1834, a judicial election 
was held in this town, including the village and 
surrounding country, for one justice of the 
peace. The canvass was very warm and active 
by the friends of the two candidates, though 
no party politics were involved in the contest, 
as I think there never should be in judicial 
elections. One candidate received 172 votes, 
158 



Stolen 2Dcan Caton 



and the other received 47 votes. But 219 
voters could be found in Chicago and vicinity. 
Probably this was the last election ever held 
here when every voter came to the polls. 
Indeed, I regret to say that the most enterpris- 
ing and thoroughgoing men here have rarely 
taken time to go and vote, and their example 
has been too largely followed, though not 
by the baser sort. At the last presidential 
election, three years ago, Chicago polled 62,448 
votes, and yet a large number of voters took 
no interest in the matter, or at least took 
more interest in their stores or their shops. 
I doubt if much more than two thirds of the 
voters in this city have voted since 1840. How 
can we resist noticing the contrast between 
219 in 1834, and 62,448 in 1876, especially 
when we remember that the latter number was 
heavily handicapped? 

On that same 14th of July, an event occurred 
of a commercial character which should render 
it memorable, and it deserves to be recorded. 
On that day came the first commercial vessel 
that ever passed the piers into the Chicago har- 
bor — the Ariadne, Captain Pickering. Early 
on that morning the friends of the successful 
candidate assembled at the piers, which consisted 
of a few wooden cribs, and dragged the schooner 
across the bar into deep water, where all got 
on board and sailed in her up the river to the 
Point, where the election was held, shouting 
merrily, and were answered by those on shore 
159 



JSemmigcenceg of <£arip Chicago 

manifesting an appreciation of the important 
event. She was gayly decorated with all the 
bunting which could be raised, and we thought 
presented a splendid appearance, the rigging 
manned by all who could climb the shrouds. 
This kindled an enthusiasm which lasted till 
the last vote was polled, and no doubt contrib- 
uted more to the success than the merits of the 
candidate. The most active and efficient man 
on that day, as I remember, was the late George 
W. Dole, who was always thoroughly in earnest, 
whether electioneering for a friend or attending 
to his commercial affairs. His memory should 
be ever cherished, and his name never forgot- 
ten when the founders of this city are recalled. 
The contrast in the hotels and of the mode 
of living in Chicago, is scarcely less striking. 
The first night I slept in Chicago was in a log 
tavern, the name they went by then, west of 
the junction of the rivers, kept by W. W. 
Wattles. The next day, I learned that the 
best entertainment was to be had at the crack 
boarding-house of the place, kept by Dexter 
Graves, at five dollars per week. It was a log 
house near the middle of the square just north 
of the present Tremont House. If it was a 
log house, I assure you we had good fare 
and a right merry time too. There were seven 
beds in the attic, in which fourteen of us slept 
that summer, and I fear we sometimes disturbed 
the family with our carrying on o' nights. I 
know of but one of those fourteen boarders 
160 



Stofpt 2Dean Caton 



besides myself now living. Edward H. Had- 
dock knows who slept with me in that attic. 
Haddock was a sly fellow then, for before one 
of us suspected what he was at, he made sure 
of the flower of that family, and a real gem of 
priceless value she was, who still survives to 
promote the happiness of those around her. 
Young ladies were in demand here in those 
days. 

The first frame tavern ever built in Chicago 
was by Mark Beaubien, upon whose geniality 
advancing years seem to have no influence. I 
am sure there are some here present who were 
then his guests. There he kept tavern, to use 
his own expression at that time, like — (the 
Judge hesitated. A voice — "How?") "Shall 
I say it, Mark?" (Mr. Beaubien answered, 
"Yes! ") Well, then, he said he kept tavern 
"like hell!" 

To go back to that primitive time, and to 
think of those who are gone and those who are 
left, we may gratefully acknowledge that a very 
large proportion have been spared through so 
many years of active life. General Strong has 
recalled the names of a number of the promi- 
nent early settlers of Chicago who have passed 
beyond the reach of your hospitality. Allow 
me to recall the names of two who have been 
taken from the ranks of my own profession, 
and who came to Chicago the same year with 
myself — 1833. Their learning and their talents 
would have made them conspicuous at any bar. 
161 



&tmmi$tmtt& of <£arip Chicago 

All who knew them will join me in paying a 
tribute of respect to the memories of Giles 
Spring and James H. Collins. Besides these, 
there were several other lawyers who located 
in Chicago during the same year, among whom 
I may mention the name of Edward Casey, 
a most genial gentleman. All of these are long 
since gone, and I alone am left to represent 
that earliest Chicago bar. 

(Here a question was raised by some of the 
old-timers as to whether Mr. James H. Collins 
came in the year 1833, but Judge Caton settled 
it, stating that he finished his legal studies in 
Mr. Collins ' office in New York, and came 
directly thence to Chicago, when he wrote back 
to his former preceptor an account of the 
country, on the receipt of which Mr. Collins 
made his arrangements to come west, and 
arrived in Chicago in September, 1833; and 
in February following he entered into partner- 
ship with Mr. Collins in the practice of the law, 
constituting the firm of Collins & Caton.) 

Resuming, Judge Caton said : To those who 
have not been eye-witnesses, it seems incredible 
that in the adult lifetime of so many of us here 
present a city of half a million of inhabitants 
has grown up from nothing, and that what was 
then a rich, wild waste for five hundred miles 
or more around, has been subdued, cultivated, 
and populated by millions of hardy, industrious, 
and intelligent agriculturists. The marvel is 
the growth of the country rather than the city. 
162 



^<rf>n 2Dean Caton 



The latter was compelled by the former, and 
indeed has never kept pace with it. 

Still, to those who have witnessed all this, 
it seems more like a dream than a reality. To 
those who have not witnessed the growths of 
cities and country in this occidental land, many 
can hardly believe that he who addresses you 
now, opened the first office for the practice of 
the law in Chicago. They have often called 
me the father of the Chicago bar, and proud I 
am of such a progeny. In numbers they are 
truly great, and in ability, in learning, in 
integrity, and in patriotism I will proudly com- 
pare them with any other bar in the United 
States. I have ever tried to so bear myself 
that no one should blush at the mention of my 
name, and I most gratefully acknowledge that 
they have always shown me a filial affection, 
ever treating me with the greatest respect and 
confidence, omitting no opportunity to do me 
honor. This is a consoling reflection, and a 
sweet experience in the decline of life. 

Would time permit, it would not be unbe- 
coming in me to follow my friend who, in your 
behalf, has extended to us so cordial a welcome, 
in the great changes which have been here 
wrought in so short a time — for remember, 
that the period of one human life is but a day 
in the life of a people. But I must forbear. 
Really, it seems like mystery that what was 
but yesterday a very little village — for it seems 
but yesterday that I was a very young man — 

163 



&tmmi$ttntt$ of €arlp Chicago 

has today grown to be so great a city. Some- 
times despotic power has builded cities in the 
frozen North and in the genial South; but 
a Peter and a Constantine, with national 
resources, could never equal the magic results 
which we have here witnessed as the voluntary 
works of freeborn enterprise, here in the tem- 
perate zone, where no ancient civilization had 
left its work. It lacks but antiquated ruins 
and crumbling columns to persuade the traveler 
that he is in some great city of the Old World, 
where modern architecture has wiped out many 
of the evidences of departed grandeur and 
supplied its place with the improvements of 
later times. But the end is not yet. If we 
saw the very beginning, you too have seen but 
the beginning. When the youngest man among 
you shall have passed through the active scenes 
which lie before him, and shall feel that his 
work is nearly done, he will stand amid a suc- 
ceeding generation, and tell those who shall 
have arisen to take the places of him and his 
contemporaries, of what he remembers of the 
present time as of the beginning of Chicago, 
or at least of its early youth. Then our voices 
will be hushed, to be no more heard forever, 
and may we not fondly hope that he will still 
kindly remember us, and that we here lived and 
labored before his time. So, too, may we hope 
that this Calumet Club may flourish those forty 
years or more to come, and that its members 
still will stretch forth the hand of welcome to 
164 



Stofjn 2>ean Caton 



those who shall survive from now to then, as 
cordially as you have extended your courtesies 
to us. 

If we have talked only of Chicago and its 
progress, we must not forget that Chicago is 
not phenomenal, but it is the whole great West 
that is phenomenal. We have other great 
cities in this grand, magnificent valley, whose 
growth, whose enterprise, and whose greatness 
should equally command our admiration; many 
of whose early founders are yet spared, to hear 
the expressions of gratitude and to receive the 
honors which they so richly deserve. Let us 
not say that there is a rivalry between these 
great cities of the West; but there is a noble 
emulation as to which shall do most for the 
honor and the glory of our beloved country. 

Nothing would be so agreeable to me as to 
talk to you by the hour of ancient Chicago, when 
the wild waters of the lake, on the one hand, 
were rarely vexed by the ships of commerce, 
and the wild flowers which covered the broad 
prairies on the other, were undisturbed by cul- 
tivation and uncropped by flocks and herds — 
save the wild deer that roamed at large over 
their broad bosoms; but I fear you will think 
I am becoming a little senile in my enthusiasm. 

Especially do I like to talk of the olden times 
when I see around me so many of those old-time 
friends, with many of whom I have not clasped 
hands for twenty or thirty years. Here is my 
old friend, Mark Beaubien, of whom I have so 
165 



J$emini0cence£ of €arip Chicago 

often spoken — because he is so worthy of 
mention, and because his name is so closely 
interwoven with all our sports and joyous gath- 
erings, when we were all young together. He 
used to play the fiddle at our dances, and he 
played it in such a way as to set every heel 
and toe in the room in active motion. He 
would lift the sluggard from his seat, and set him 
whirling over the floor like mad. If his play- 
ing was less artistic than that of Ole Bull, it 
was a thousand times more inspiring to those 
who are not educated up to a full appreciation 
of what would now create a furor in Chicago; 
but I will venture the assertion that Mark's old 
fiddle would bring ten young men and women 
to their feet and send them through the mazes 
of the dance, while they would sit quietly 
through Ole Bull's best performances — 
pleased, no doubt, but not enthused so that 
they could not retain their seats. That was 
long years since; but if he has that same old 
fiddle still, he can, I doubt not, draw the bow 
now in such a way as to thrill those, at least, 
in whom it will awaken pleasing memories of 
days and nights when young blood coursed 
wildly and joy was unrestrained. To show 
you that this is so, and how he did it then, I 
call on him to play some of those sweet old 
tunes, if he has that same old fiddle yet. 



166 



Slonat^an ^ouns ^cammon 

[An Address delivered at the Reception to the Settlers 

of Chicago Prior to 1840, by the Calumet 

Club of Chicago, May 27, 1879.] 



I WISH to hear from so many of the gentle- 
men present, whose faces I have not seen 
before for many years, but whom I saw 
nearly forty-four years ago, when I came to 
Chicago, that I shall refrain from making a 
speech. I shall not make any remarks, except 
to correct, on my own account, and on account 
of the old settlers here, an error in the address 
which we have listened to with so much 
pleasure. I wish to tender my thanks to 
General Strong for the very eloquent, able, 
classical, and truly historical address which he 
has made at this meeting, and to express the 
wish that it will not be allowed to pass into 
oblivion, but will be printed in a permanent 
form, and placed, if not in archives of this 
Club, at least in the archives of the city, and 
of the Historical Society, and in the libraries 
of all the old settlers, and of the new settlers 
who wish to learn and remember the history of 
Chicago. I wish, in this connection, to correct 
one or two statements. It was said that Mayor 
Chapin recommended the sale of the first great 
school building, or its being converted into 
167 



$itmmx$tmtt$ of <£arip Chicago 

an insane asylum, for the purpose of confining 
gentlemen in it who had been instrumental in 
wasting the peopled money in building "big 
schoolhouses. ,, It was not Mayor Chapin 
who made that proposition. , John P. Chapin 
was one of the most noble men who lived in 
Chicago. He was an early mayor, but subse- 
quent to Mayor Garrett, succeeding him in office 
in 1846, and was one of our largest and most 
influential and enterprising merchants — a man 
who always stood to the front, in favor of 
every true enterprise and every measure that 
tended to prove and extend the power, influence 
and prosperity of the city of Chicago. 

There is one other man, now departed to his 
long home, however, who deserves a great deal 
of credit, in relation to the schools of the city, 
and I beg permission to say a few words in 
his commendation. That man was Dr. Josiah 
C. Goodhue, and if I recollect right, he was 
one of the first aldermen of the city. He was 
one of the committee who designed the seal of 
the city, which I recollect was called "Dr. 
Goodhue's little baby. ,, He it was to whom 
we are indebted very much for our present 
school system. The public schools had been 
tried in Chicago, and proved to be a failure. 
While he was a member of the first council — 
I think every member of the council was Demo- 
cratic — one evening he came into my office, 
which was very near then where it is now, 
on the south side of Lake near Clark Street, 
168 



SPonatfjan Uoung £cammon 

and lamented over the condition of things in 
Chicago. It was after the panic of 1 837, which 
was vastly worse than the panic of 1873, and 
everything was very depressed. " Nothing/ ' 
he said, "could be done here in the West. 
The people of Chicago had voted down the free 
school system.' ' You will recollect, in 1835, 
the people voted down the first local free 
school bill we had obtained from the legislature 
for Chicago, and he said we could not have 
any schools. I said, playfully, to Dr. Goodhue, 
we can have free schools, and if you will put 
the matter into my hands, I will establish a 
free school system that will be satisfactory to 
the city of Chicago. He said he would do it. 
I said, "You cannot do it; you and every 
member of the council are Democrats, and I 
am a Whig." He said: "That makes no 
difference. If you will take hold of it, you 
shall have unlimited power to do what you 
choose, and the council will sustain you." I 
said, if he would do that, I would give as much 
time as was necessary to it; but I said, he 
could not get the council to agree to it. He 
said, "I think you are mistaken; I think you 
can have your own way about everything. I 
will consult the council, and let you know next 
week." About a week afterward, he came to 
my office, and told me that the council were 
all agreed, and if I would take hold of the 
matter, I might write my own ordinances and 
laws, and they would give me supreme power, 
169 



MtmM$ttntt$ of <£arlp Chicago 

within all reasonable bounds. I did so. I 
wish to say this, not for the purpose of re- 
counting anything I have done, but to give 
to the common council of Chicago, which 
differed from me in politics, and of which you, 
Mr. Chairman [Judge Caton], were a member, 
and to Dr. Goodhue, the credit of the first act 
which culminated in the permanent establish- 
ment of the public schools of Chicago. The 
council put the whole matter into the hands of 
one of their political opponents, who was then 
supposed to be an ambitious man, and one who 
never lost that reputation until his wings were 
scorched by the Great Fire, in order to further 
the great cause of public instruction; and we are 
indebted now for our excellent school system to 
the stone that was first laid by Dr. Goodhue. 
I wish to say as to the first board, of which I 
was a member for several years, it was selected 
upon non-partisan and non-sectarian ideas, and 
served faithfully and conscientiously. The 
memory of some of its leading members is per- 
petuated in the naming of our schools. 

The first public school building which was 
erected in Chicago was called Dearborn School, 
and it was on the north side of Madison Street, 
east of Dearborn. It was built in 1844, while 
I was in the board. 

It was, at that time, the practice to select 
those who were supposed to be good men for 
the places of aldermen, and to insist on such 
men taking their turn in serving the public. 
170 



^onatfjan Hotmg Scammon 

Mr. Edward H. Haddock, one of our oldest 
and wealthiest citizens,who is here this evening, 
and who had served a term as alderman of the 
first ward, came to my house one morning in 
the spring of 1845, an d said: "You must run 
for alderman in this ward this year; and if you 
will run, John Calhoun (who was a Democrat, 
and my neighbor) will run with you, and you 
shall be elected without any opposition." I 
said I had too much to attend to, but he in- 
sisted and I finally consented to do so. When 
the thing was made known to the leading men 
of the Whig party, to which I belonged, they 
said the first ward was the only Whig ward, 
and we ought not to forego our right to put 
two Whigs in the council. I then said I 
would not run. But Mr. George W. Meeker, 
who was one of the board of school directors, 
while walking with me up Dearborn Street, 
met Alvin Calhoun, a prominent partisan 
Whig, and said to him, "We are going to 
nominate Scammon for alderman tonight.' ' 
Mr. Calhoun replied, "We can't elect Scam- 
mon.' ' Said Meeker, "Why not." He re- 
sponded: "I have nothing to say against 
Scammon. He is a good man except that he 
goes in for building too big schoolhouses. 
The people don't want their money wasted in 
that way," and I could not get the nomination, 
or if I did I could not be elected. The Whig 
nominating convention was held that night at 
the old Mansion House, on the north side of 
171 



Mzmmi$tmtt$ of oEarlp Chicago 

Lake Street, between State and Dearborn, and 
I was nominated with very slight opposition. 
But I declined to run so long as anyone was 
opposed to my nomination. Mr. Haddock 
then said I had no right to decline; and he 
offered a resolution, which was almost unani- 
mously adopted, that I should not be permitted 
to decline. In consideration of the ground of 
opposition stated to Mr. G. W. Meeker, in my 
presence as before stated, I concluded to run, 
and to test the question whether "big school- 
houses' ' were unpopular, and to see whether 
it was true, as Alvin Calhoun had said, "that 
no one who built great schoolhouses could be 
elected.' ' Mr. Calhoun had stated, in the 
conversation alluded to, that Scammon "was 
crazy on the subject of schools, and the people 
would not allow their money to be wasted." 
I made up my mind I would try that single 
question, and I got both a larger vote and a 
larger majority than any man had ever had for 
alderman in the city; and this seemed to settle 
the question as to the popularity of big school- 
houses. 

In 1845, Augustus Garrett, the Democratic 
candidate, was elected mayor at the same 
time; and when Mr. Mahlon D. Ogden, who is 
now present and who was also elected an alder- 
man at the same election that I was elected an 
alderman, and I took our seats in the council, 
the mayor read his message, in which he de- 
nounced the extravagant school policy and 
172 



^onatfjatt foung <§cammon 

proposed that the public schoolhouse on Madi- 
son Street, which was too large to be ever 
filled with scholars, should be sold or converted 
into an insane asylum. 

I wish to do justice to the memory of the 
late John P. Chapin and to the memory of Dr. 
Goodhue in relation to the great question of 
public instruction. I am sorry I have not time 
to allude to other matters, or more than to 
mention the name of a great man to whom, in 
my opinion, we are indebted more than to any 
other, and to whom the whole Northwest is 
indebted for public improvements more than 
to any other man since I have lived in Chicago 
— a man who came to Chicago in 1835 — 
William B. Ogden. 

If one minute more will be allowed to me, I 
wish to pay tribute of respect to one of five 
or six lawyers I found here in 1835, when I 
landed upon the then barborless shore of Chi- 
cago — one of our best citizens, who is now 
lying on a sick-bed on the other side of the river. 
He and I had an office together over forty-two 
years ago, precisely where my office is now. 
He was a man, Mr. Chairman (Judge John 
Dean Caton), you knew well. He was the 
second mayor of Chicago, and elected over a 
leading Democrat, while he was a Whig, in a 
city where the Democratic majority was so large 
that the year before every officer was a Demo- 
crat; but he had been a partner of Edward 
Casey before. He was with Judge Goodrich 

173 



&tmM$tmttg of <£arlp Chicago 

afterward, and you and I know he was the best 
lawyer ever in the city of Chicago or any other 
place, on the wrong side of a question that 
had no merits in it. He not only had that 
character, but what was better, that of a good 
lawyer, a good man, and a good citizen, and he 
made a good judge of our courts, to which 
office he was elected by the people. I refer to 
the Hon. Buckner S. Morris. Peace to his last 
days and to his memory. I am sorry he is not 
here. He was one of us in the olden time. 
We liked him then, and we do not forget him 
now. 



174 



